"I don't know, I'm sure. Only you wanted it so much, and if you were to play me false, as people say you have done with many a sweetheart before me, it might be put to a bad use."
"But they slander me. I never yet betrayed a sweetheart," said Storms, eagerly.
"Then it is true that Ruth Jessup was the first to give you up. No, no, do not say it. No woman on earth could do that. I would rather think you false to her than not. The other I never could believe—never."
"Well, believe what you like; but do not come here again without that bit of paper. I did not fairly read it."
The suppressed eagerness in his voice aroused all the innate craft in the girl's nature. He had outdone his part, and thus enhanced the advantage that she held over him to a degree that made her determined to keep the paper. In her soul she had no trust in the man; but was willing to win him by any means that promised to be most effectual. Still she was capable of meeting craft with deception, and did it now.
"Well, if I think of it."
Storms read the insincerity of her evasion, and seemed to cast the subject from his mind. But he felt the thraldom of this girl's power with a keenness that might have terrified her, had she comprehended it. Besides, the news she had brought to him that evening was of a kind to make him hate the bearer and intensify his thirst for vengeance on young Hurst.
CHAPTER XLIX.
BROODING THOUGHTS.