The rigid pose and the set jaw, the irreconcilable light in the eyes, were all things that Dorothy understood at once and without explanation. As she looked at her husband she thought, somehow, of a falcon or eagle poised on a bare tree-top at a precipice edge. There was the same alert restiveness as might have marked a bird of prey, gauging the blue sky-reaches with predatory eye, and ready to strike with a winged bolt of death.
Quietly, because the baby had just fallen asleep, she rose and laid the child on the bright patterned coverlet of the fourposter, and she paused, too, to brace herself with a glance into the cool shadows and golden lights of the ample branches beyond the window.
Then she came back to the door and her voice was steady but low as she said, "Ye've done found out who did hit. I kin read thet in yore eyes, Ken."
He nodded, but until he had crossed the room and laid a hand on each of her shoulders, he did not speak.
"Since ther fust day I ever seed ye, honey," he declared with a sort of hushed fervour, "standin' up thar in ther winder, my heart hain't nuver struck a beat save ter love ye—an' thet war jest erbout a y'ar ago."
"Hit's been all my life, Ken," she protested. "Ther time thet went ahead of thet didn't skeercely count atall."
Her voice trembled, and the meeting of their gaze was a caress. Then he said: "When I wedded with ye out thar—under thet old tree—with ther sun shinin' down on us—I swore ter protect ye erginst all harm."
"Hain't ye always done thet, Ken?"
"Erginst all ther perils I knowed erbout—yes," he answered, slowly, then his tone leaped into vehemence. "But I didn't suspicion—until terday—thet whilst I was away from ye—ye hed ter protect yoreself erginst Bas Rowlett."
"Bas Rowlett!" the name broke from her lips with a gasp and a spasmodic heart-clutch of panic. Her well-kept secret stood unveiled! She did not know how it had come about, but she realized that the time of reckoning had come and, if her husband's face was an indication to be trusted, that reckoning belonged to to-day and would be neither diverted nor postponed.