Page:Hornung - Irralies Bushranger.djvu/111



"Thank you, Miss Villiers! I call that kind!"

The words followed Irralie to her room, and kept her from her bed. They sang in her ears and were written in her brain. They were the words of a villain, and yet they cut her to the heart. They cut her so cruelly, and in such open and prolonged defiance of her reason, that the shameful truth came home to her at last. They were the words of a villain whom she loved.

Yes, she had loved, as she had distrusted him, from the very first. That was why she had said nothing about the pistol. That was why she had suggested the lost overcoat. She had done this, and left that undone, on instinct simply. And instinctively she had loved him from the first.