"Tell me one thing," she said softly. "You do—love me!"
"God knows I do!" he answered. The words came from his heart with a nervous intensity which showed itself in his quivering lips, and the vibration of his tone. She knew their truth as surely as though she had seen them written in letters of fire, and that knowledge, or rather her absolute confidence in it, made her in a measure bold. The dainty exclusiveness which had half repelled, half attracted other men had fallen away from her. She stood before him a loving tearful woman, with something of that gentle shame which is twin sister to modesty burning in her cheeks.
"Then I will not let you go," she said softly, taking both his hands in hers, and holding him tightly. "Nothing shall come between us."
He looked into the love light which gleamed in her wet eyes, and stooping down he took her again into his arms and kissed her.
"My darling!" he whispered passionately, "my darling! But you do not know."
"Yes, I do," she answered, drawing him gently back to their old place. "You mean about what Rachel Kynaston said that awful night, don't you?"
"More than that, alas!" he answered in a low tone. "Other people besides Rachel Kynaston have had suspicions about me. I have been watched, and while I was away, Falcon's Nest has been entered, and papers have been taken away."
She was white with fear. This was Benjamin Levy's doing, and it was through her. Ought she to tell him? She could not! She could not!
"But they do not—the papers, I mean—make it appear that——"
"Helen," he interrupted, with his face turned away from her, "it is best that you should know the truth. Those papers reveal the story of a bitter enmity between myself and Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. When you consider that and the other things, you will see that I may at any moment be arrested."