“That is my name, and the drowning would have been an accomplished fact if it had not been for the extraordinary pluck of a girl,” he said, with a keen look at her distressed face. “Is it possible that you——”
But Bertha had reached the end of her power of endurance, and, overcome by the disappointment and perplexity of it all, she put down her head and burst into miserable tears.
CHAPTER XXX
Bad News
A curious change came over Edgar Bradgate at the sight of Bertha’s breakdown, and, leaning forward, he gently touched the bowed shoulder that was nearest to him and asked, in a sympathetic tone: “Won’t you tell me all about it, and why you are so upset because the things are not mine?”
“But they must be yours. The case dropped out of your coat, the coat which you wrapped round me because I shivered so badly,” she said, with a little gasping sob, as she strove to get calm again and to argue the matter out on common-sense lines. She was fighting against the possibility of having to retain the stones longer in her own keeping; for, bad as it had been before, it would be much worse now, because the knowledge was shared by at least one more person.
“Then you are the girl who saved me, and you must have thought me worse than a heathen because I never stopped to thank you for your bravery,” he said, with such a thrill of genuine admiration in his tone, that Bertha felt the hot colour sweeping up over her face right up to the roots of her hair; then he went on in apology for his neglect: “But I was hard pressed. It meant everything to me to get clear away, so I did what I could and went. I did not remember the coat until the middle of the night, when I was far away from Mestlebury and, truth to tell, miserably cold; but there was no help for it, and it was rather an aged garment also, that is to say, it had seen considerable wear and tear of one sort and another.”
“It was a very good coat, indeed,” said Bertha, “and I brought it with me to restore it to you, only it was in the car, and is, of course, at the bottom of the river now. But as the diamonds fell out of your pocket, they must be your property. Perhaps being ill has made you forget all about it.”
He smiled and shook his head. “That does not follow, since someone may have put them in my pocket without my knowledge, unlikely though it seems.”
“But they fell out of the inside pocket, so they could hardly have been put there without your knowledge,” she objected.
“You are sure that it was my coat?” he asked quickly.