Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/186

 him back? Of course, he'll go to you. That night, I tried to stop him from going down to you. You see, I'd heard, and so I told him that probably he'd be shot, if he went. So I reckon he went to you a little more directly than if I hadn't spoken."

Gregg stopped; Hale hadn't told her that, he discerned, as he watched the tightening of her lips and the quick, half-clenching of her hands.

"When he was shot," Gregg went on, "that was another effort to prevent him doing what he wished; he will recover from that effort, and wish as before. What are you going to do?"

Sybil Russell kept her eyes steadily on Gregg's, and he had the extraordinary sensation that, by her eyes, she was trying to hold his from examining her; from witnessing the working of her lips, the prolonged holding and then the sudden inspiration of her breath lifting her bosom quickly and the pulse which visibly rat-tatted in her neck. A flush flowed over her face, vanished and resurged hot and red, and for the moment Gregg could not think of any one but of her who had given herself in marriage four years ago to one big, powerful, vital man, Russell, when he had been a soldier, finding—well, not what she had undoubtedly deluded herself to expect. But now, with another man, she had found it, and some one was asking if she would give it up.

"The word I wanted to send to his daughter, if it were possible for it to mean anything to her," Mrs. Russell said deliberately and with almost perfect control, "was that her father came to me because he loves me; I keep him for that and for no other reason."

She said "keep" without a loudening or describable change in her voice, but Gregg thought he had never