"Perhaps I have no right to press you," he said; "but I should like to know."
Miranda spread the glove out on the table, and carefully divided and spread out the fingers. "I will tell you," she said at length, with something of a spirt in the quickness of her speech. "I am still capable of remorse, though very likely you can hardly believe that. Do you remember," she began to speak with greater ease, "when we rode out to Ronda La Viega, I asked you why you never expressed what you felt? I was then beginning to be afraid that you would take my--my trick too much to heart--that you would really think I needed you. My fear became certain this afternoon, when I--I was putting the flower in your coat. I was sorry then, as you saw when you came into the room. I was yet more sorry when you spoke to me as you did, for I thought that if you hadn't cared, if you had never intended to be more than my friend, the trick would not have mattered so much. And that was just what I meant, when I said it was the friend I wanted, not the lover."
Charnock listened to the explanation, accepted it and put it away in his mind.
"I see," he remarked, and her bosom rose and fell quickly. "All this time you have been just playing with me as you played with Wilbraham this afternoon."
"Just in the same way," she returned without flinching.
"Ah, but you dropped his flower down the cliff," he exclaimed suddenly.
"You forget that yours had already fallen on to the ground."
"Yes, that's true," and the suspicion died out of his face. "And that basket of flowers?" he asked.
This time, and for the first time since the questions had begun, Miranda did flinch. She had a great difficulty in answering, "It has already been sent off."
"To Gibraltar?" Miranda's difficulty increased. "To whom at Gibraltar? A friend, a man?"