"That night, it did get hold of me." She laughed a little nervously, a little uneasily.
"And now you tell it to me—and I must say that your telling made it twice the story that it really is—now you tell it as if it were the greatest thing that ever happened to you!"
For a moment Mary fenced. "Well, nothing interesting ever has happened in my humdrum life before." But old Naylor pursed up his lips in contempt of her fencing. "It did seem to me a great—a great experience. Not the burglars and all that—though some of the things, like the water-butt, did amuse me very much—but our being apart from all the world, there by ourselves—against the whole world in a way, Mr. Naylor."
"The law on one side, the robbers on the other—and you two alone together!"
"Yes, you understand. That was the way I felt it. But we weren't together, not in every way. I mean—we were fighting between ourselves too—right up to the very end." She gave another low laugh. "I suppose we're fighting still; he means to face me with some Radbolt villainy, and make me sorry for what he calls my legalism—with an epithet!"
"That's his idea, and my own too, I confess. Those chief mourners will find the money—and some other things that'll make 'em stare. But they'll lie low; they'll sit on the cash till the time comes when it's safe to dispose of it; and they'll bilk the Inland Revenue out of the duties. The remarkable thing is that Beaumaroy seems to want them to do it."
"That's to make me sorry; that's to prove me wrong, Mr. Naylor."
"It may make you sorry—it makes me sorry, for that matter; but it doesn't prove you wrong. You were right. My boy Alec would have taken the same line as you did. Now you needn't laugh at me, Mary. I own up at once—that's my highest praise."
"I know it is; and it implies a contrast?"
Old Naylor unclasped his hands and spread them in a deprecatory gesture. "It must do that," he acknowledged.