"You will allow a natural curiosity in me to demand why you should wear the name and retain the possessions of my friend Lady Diana Vernilands?" he asked, dangerously suave.
Then Clive sprang full-armed to the fray.
"And you will allow a natural curiosity in me to demand why you should harry my friend like this—browbeat her for a girlish folly entered into mutually by two girls and ending in tragedy through no fault of April's?" The painter's eyes burned with a blue fire bleak as her own mountain tops. It was as though Joan of Arc had come to the rescue and was sweeping the room with valiant sword. Even Kenna was partially intimidated.
"That is her story," he muttered.
"You fool, Ronald Kenna," she said gently. "Can't you look in her face and see there is no touch of treachery or darkness there? Thank God, Kerry is not so blind."
There was a deep silence. Then she said:
"Listen, then, to my story," and repeated the facts April had told her, but as April could never have told them, so profound was her understanding of the motives of the two girls in exchanging identities, so tender her treatment of the wayward Diana. Truly this "unfulfilled woman" was greater in the width and depth of her soul than many of those to whom life has given fulfilment of their dreams.
Daylight faded, and shadows stole through the open windows. In the large, low-ceiled room clustered with saddles and harness and exquisite pictures, everything grew dim, except their white faces, and the glistening of tears as they dripped from April's lids.
"I must ask to be forgiven," said Kenna very humbly, at last. "My only plea is that my friendship for Kerry blinded me. And . . ." he halted an instant before the confession of his trouble. "I once loved that little wayward girl."
So it was Diana Vernilands who had proved false and sent him into the wilds! Somehow that explained much to them all: much for forgiveness, but very much more for pity and sympathy.