If he did, he made no sign whatever; and until the departure of Lady Millbank he devoted himself to the Rector.
When Lady Millbank rose to say good-bye, Susan told herself that now at last the ordeal was at an end, and that he would go too. But, apparently, he had no intention whatever of stirring. And the climax came when Dom and Carew asked him to come out into the garden and have a cigarette. The cigarettes were Dom’s. Mr. Crosby seemed only too willing to accept this lively invitation, and Dom, thrusting his arm through Betty’s, asked her to come along with him.
‘And you, Miss Barry,’ says Crosby, now walking up deliberately to Susan, who is still sitting in her shady corner. The elder Miss Barry had gone out into the hall to bid Lady Millbank a last adieu, and tell her of the latest misdoings of the young women of the Christian Association in Curraghcloyne. ‘I hope you will come too.’
‘Oh yes, Susan, come on,’ says Betty. ‘It’s lovely outside to-day, and father won’t be able to see the smoke through the beech hedge.’ The Rector objects to smoking, so that Dom and Carew have quite a time of it keeping their pipes and cigarettes out of his way.
‘I hope you will come,’ says Crosby. He is bending over Susan now, and he has distinctly lowered his tone. ‘Do you know, I have come over to-day to see and thank you. I felt it quite my duty to do it.’
‘To thank me?’ For the first time during the afternoon Susan looks straight at him. Her large and lovely eyes are full of wonderment. ‘To thank me?’
‘Yes, indeed; I have great cause to be grateful to you,’ says Mr. Crosby, with such extreme earnestness and gravity that she rises. What if, after all, she was wrong, and the thief was not really Mr. Crosby?
A cousin perhaps—a disagreeable one: cousins are very often disagreeable, and often, too, more like one than one’s own brothers are. Of course, if he was a kinsman, Mr. Crosby would be very grateful to her for hushing up the whole affair, and telling nobody. And yet——
Again she lifts her eyes and studies his face. No, not even twins were ever so alike as this man and the man that stole the cherries.
‘Are you coming?’ calls Betty impatiently, and Susan moves forward. In a moment she is stepping from the low sill of the Rectory drawing-room on to the little plot of grass beneath, disregarding Mr. Crosby’s hand as he holds it out to help her.