“He pretended that he did not, but Martin knew him without question and was horrified to see him.”
Jean did not speak, but her eyes were full of swift wonder. “And then?”
“Then it was my turn to pretend that I had noticed nothing. They are together now and will be till to-morrow morning, at any rate. That’s one reason I came here.”
She did not ask the other but slid the bangle on her wrist with a slow and lingering touch. Derrick’s gaze did not leave her. He saw the color flood and desert her cheek, and the pulse throbbing in her slim throat. How utterly desirable she was! This was the indescribable quality about which Edith had talked with a cheerfulness that he now saw must have cost her dearly; the thing that secured what all women at some time long to possess.
He waited breathlessly, but she was still silent. Her heart whispered one thing, but over her there yet hung a cloud of memories that well nigh blotted out all else. For so long she had thought of herself as the child of a foully murdered man, for so long had the menace seemed to be transferred to herself, that the promise of a future such as she believed she saw in Derrick’s eyes seemed almost as unreal as it was divine. She was already more than fond of him and admitted it in secret hours. It was something new and strange and alluring for the mind to feed on. But what escape would it mean till the secret of Beech Lodge had been read, and the weight lifted from her soul? She took the bangle because she did not want to hurt him, but her eyes avoided his.
“What do you think is going to happen now?” she asked shakily.
“I don’t know. I wanted to see you first of all. Do you remember such a man ever coming to Beech Lodge before?”
“What is he like?”
He told her, and she shook her head. “I can’t think of any one. Martin had no friends even in the village, and father had no visitors from the East. Can it be the image that brought him?”
“Nothing else, as I see it.”