She laughed a little uneasily.
"Because I knew."
"How did you know?"
"Because--" she began; then again she laughed. "Because," she
added, quickly, as if moved by a fresh impulse, "Jack Chilcote
made it very obvious to any one who was in his morning-room at
twelve o'clock today that it would be you and not he who would
be found filling his place this afternoon! It's all very well
to talk about honor, but when one walks into an empty room and
sees a telegram as long as a letter open on a bureau--"
But her sentence was never finished. Loder had heard what he
came to hear; any confession she might have to offer was of no
moment in his eyes.
"My dear girl," he broke in, brusquely, "don't trouble! I
should make a most unsatisfactory father confessor." He spoke
quickly. His color was still high, but not of annoyance. His
suspense was transformed into unpleasant certainty; but the
exchange left him surer of himself. His perplexity had dropped
to a quiet sense of self-reliance; his paramount desire was for
solitude in which to prepare for the task that lay before him;
the most congenial task the world possessed--the unravelling
of Chilcote's tangled skeins.
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