“What do you expect?” she answered. “You have gone much further—very much further than I ever dreamt of. You have led me on.”
“No,” he said, “it is your own kindness of heart, your sympathy with the unfortunate that has led you on. I assure you I was never so bold before I met you, before I appealed to you that night when you stood on your balcony. Do you regret? If you tell me to stop, to abandon my plans and depart—well, I will depart.”
She smiled sadly.
“I do not want you to do that,” she said. “Nevertheless, I tremble for what you have done.”
“Do not tremble,” he said coaxingly. “If I am not safe here, where am I safe? Is not this the very last place where anyone would expect to find me and my—my booty?”
“But, then, sending the servants away,” she exclaimed.
“Nothing simpler,” he commented.
“I don’t know how I did it,” she mused, as if aghast at the memory of what she had achieved; “and as for to-morrow, how I shall explain it to Pauline I really can’t imagine!”
“To-morrow,” he said, “everything will be over one way or the other; you will be able to resume your habit of speaking the truth. By the way,” he went on, in a tone carefully careless, “you managed to do what I asked you with the boat?”
“Yes,” she replied.