“Then how can I answer for my better thoughts?” he protested.
“No, you can’t, of course,” she said. “Only I don’t want us to part enemies.”
“Come,” he said; “kisses are more proof than words.”
But, at that, with a light laugh, she sprang past him, and ran. At twenty yards she turned, blew him a mocking salute, and again turning, disappeared round a corner.
“In truth, a fascinating little devil,” thought Hamilton, with a grim smile, as he continued his way. “It goes to my heart to lose her. But, if anything were needed to prove the justice of my surmises regarding her double-dealing, the equanimity with which she accepted her dismissal should supply it. And yet she loves me well enough to wish to coax my good opinion at the end. How? What is this mystery of mysteries? Poor Moll!”
“Poor Moll” herself had got home meanwhile, and, crouching catlike by an unlatched window, with her eyes peering above the sill to see if the coast were clear, had presently re-entered the house by the way she had emerged from it. Once in, she stood up, shaking her cloak from her shoulders, touched her hair into order with rapid fingers, and exhaled a tragic sigh.
“So,” she whispered, with the tiniest of giggles; “one and one makes two, and two and one makes three. If she asks me to go, I shall begin to think I’m not wanted here any more. Will it come, I wonder?”
It came, in fact, quite punctually, and entirely to her surprise. As, stealing noiselessly across the room, she pushed open the unclosed door, it made her jump to find the Countess herself standing awaiting her spectrally on the threshold. She stopped, fairly staggered, and for the moment had not a word to say.
Her ladyship advancing, Moll fell back before her, and the two stood facing one another in the empty chamber. It was remote and unused, and bare of everything save the entering moonbeams, which gave it an aspect as of its windows being shored up by ghostly buttresses.
“I congratulate you, Mrs. Davis,” said Kate, in the most curiously inward of little voices. “It is apart, and well chosen, and only the merest accident led to my discovery of your use of it. But, having seen you slip out, I could not but watch and wait to welcome you home again.”