John Herrick’s house was alight also, for he was a person of late hours. She could see, as she came near, that he was sitting by the big table in the living-room and that Hester was nodding over a book in the chair beside him. Since he was up and about again, she seemed unwilling to leave him for a moment. Beatrice knocked, but could not wait for an answer and burst in upon them, beginning to pour out her story before she was half-way across the room.
Hester, starting up, listened in frank bewilderment, but the expression on John Herrick’s face was quite different. Her tale was none too plain, but he seemed to guess, long before she had finished, what it was she was trying to say.
“Tell me,” he said at last when she paused; “tell me one thing.” Her heart sank, for his eyes were hard and his tone was harsh and dry. “Why did you come here? Was it to warn me, so that I could go away?”
“Oh, no, no,” she gasped, still breathless and incoherent. “I only felt that you ought to know what harm I had done. I wanted you to be ready to explain to the men when they came that it was I who had——”
“Do you mean,” he interrupted her, leaning forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on her with a strange, intense eagerness; “do you mean that you do not believe as they do? That you don’t suspect me of stealing that money?”
The blank astonishment on Beatrice’s face was answer enough.
“It wouldn’t be possible!” she declared simply.
He leaned back, and put his hand over his face as though suddenly weary.
“God bless you, Beatrice,” he said. “I will remember that always, that you believed in me.”
He rose slowly, limped across the room, and opened the door of a safe, let into the wall between two bookcases. He brought out two steel boxes, and set them on the table.