Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/367

Rh so any more. Her coming was nothing to him now. Her errand was nothing; she was welcome to marry the next day. But believe in his innocence she must and should: injustice from her was the last bitterness, the crowning wrong, the one intolerable misery which absorbed all that had gone before.

Something of this he showed her in his bitter, proud, inexorable look; then suddenly he retreated to the open French windows.

“You are going?” she cried. “I might have known; you were always—generous!”

“I am not now. I hear my master on the stairs.”

“You are not going altogether?”

“Certainly not at present.”

“When, when?” she cried below her breath.

“When you do me common justice.”

Daintree had gone into the wrong room. The girl ran recklessly to the window.

“Tom!”

“Miss Harding?”

“Will you swear—to me—that you are innocent?”

But Tom was gone. She heard him treading viciously in the dark verandah. A moment later Daintree found her deeply engrossed before the chart. She wanted to know what the ship meant; he told her in a tender whisper.

“What a beautiful idea!”

“Well, it wasn’t mine.”

“Whose was it?”

“My servant’s; he made her, and he moved her on each day. You would have said he was the lucky fellow himself!”