Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/374

354 Peggy withdrew. In three minutes she heard the young lady coming downstairs; in two more she was herself outside the shed, crouching between timber and shrubs and sand and sky.

CHAPTER XXXVI

SIDE-LIGHTS

“ won’t condescend?” said a scornful voice.

“Since you have made up your mind, why should I?”

“It is only your word that I ask: your solemn word to me that you are innocent.”

“If you don’t believe in me, what’s the use of giving you my solemn word? I can’t prove it, and never could; the evidence was too strong.”

“It would have been stronger still—”

The voice stopped short.

“Well?”

“If I had told them all you said to me—that very night—that very hour!”

The voice was no longer scornful. Even to Peggy it seemed to falter and to tremble with the pent-up agony of years. But Tom’s tone did not change.

“I know that,” he said bitterly. “I have always known that you had more reason than anybody in the world to think me guilty. Yet I would rather you had thought me innocent and let me die than saved my life to show me what you still think after all these months. My cup has been pretty full, but that’s the bitterest drop!”