Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/305

Rh "Where did you come from, Puss?" asked the Colonel, wearily.

"I was up in the tree. I know I shouldn't have listened, but I couldn't help it. I'd no idea! I thought things were going on so well!"

"They're going on very ill, I'm afraid," replied the Colonel, dispiritedly.

"I don't believe him! I think he's lying!" stormed Daphne, "and the Boyds! That fat, brutal, sly old villain—and Ken!" she caught her breath in a little wail, then her wrath swept her on. "To think of his living with us, and working with us and learning with us—and spying on us—yes, spying on us!" she cried, vehemently, at some faint motion of dissent. "I know what I'm talking about. Spy! Spy! And we trusted and l-liked him so! Oh, godpapa!" She clung tight to the old man, her body shaken with dry sobs of excitement.

"There, there, Puss," he soothed, patting her. "Don't take it so hard. And don't let's pass hasty judgments. It isn't quite fair to condemn our young man just on the word of somebody we don't know at all—and don't like," he added.

But Daphne shook her head, her face still concealed against his shoulder.

"No, it's true," she insisted. "I know. He told me so himself."

"Told you so!" cried the Colonel, astonished.

"I didn't understand what he meant: but now I do. It's been a plot from the first. Oh! how I do hate a sneak!" She raised her face, glowing with a new access of indignation that for the moment swept Kenneth and all his works into limbo.

"But what are you going to do?" she demanded. "Are you going to do what that odious man wants you to?"

"Let's sit down on the big limb and talk about it," said the Colonel. "Puss, I'd like to talk to somebody. I've had to keep it to myself; and I've thought and thought until I thought I'd go crazy."

"Oh, godpapa!" breathed Daphne, awed at this revelation of a Colonel so different from the one she, or anybody else, had ever known.