Dinah touched the flower stalks wistfully. She folded the ribbon with care before returning it to the envelope. Her hands trembled in her excitement.
‘You talk about reparation.... I shall not let an hour be lost. I shall write to Miss Bartrand at once, send back her own letter, and confess—oh, Gaston, the hard word is yours—that ’twas I kidnapped it.’
‘You mean to perform this act of contrition for Geoffrey’s sake?’
‘I do.’
‘Poor Geff! After getting decently out of danger once (and his letters don’t savour of a broken heart), it seems a trifle rough on him to have the thing revived.’
‘Poor Geff!’ echoed Dinah, her eyes glistening through their tears. ‘You call a man poor who has a chance of winning Marjorie Bartrand’s love? Does our happiness make you such an egotist,’—the reader will note that Dinah’s vocabulary was enlarging,—‘such an egotist you do not care for other people to marry?’
‘Or are you like the fox in the fable, my dear child—which?’
Dinah rested her clasped hands upon her husband’s shoulder, and cogitated softly.
‘Yes, I shall write to Tintajeux to-night. If it is not too late, if the hearts of both are free, Miss Bartrand will find some way of letting Geoffrey know the truth.’