“Promised! It was only a promise?”
“A promise with a proviso. I was, if I would save you, to break our engagement, to accept his love, to promise to be his wife.”
“Well, that’s cool!” said John, with a long breath. “I’m to be thrown overboard, it seems. And of course you felt great pity and consideration for me, and wanted to save me, and saw no way to do it but by accepting this desirable offer?”
His tones were full of bitterness.
She laid her hand on his lips with a touch that was almost a blow. Indignation flamed into her face.
“You are not serious in that question?” she cried. “You cannot think so meanly of me? Accept him! I rejected him with the scorn his base offer deserved. I told him Jennie Arlington was not for sale.”
“That’s my own Jennie,” he replied, kissing her burning lips. “I knew how you would answer such a suit.”
“Yet I did it with a horrible fear at my heart—a fear that he had the proofs, that he would have you arrested for theft.”
“Do I understand that you thought me capable of such a crime?”
“No, no! I knew you were innocent, but I knew how suspicious circumstances will sometimes condemn an innocent man. Valuable silks have been stolen from Mr. Leonard. You have some of them in your possession. You will be required to explain how you obtained them, and to save yourself by revealing the real culprit.”