She gained the store, panting; and instinctively tried the door before knocking. To her amazement and alarm it was open. She stood confounded on the threshold, and a head bending over the desk, under the lamp, behind the counter, was suddenly transformed into a face. And it was not the runaway at all; it was Rigden himself!
"I saw you come out!" she gasped, past recrimination, past anger, past memory itself in the semi-insensibility of over-whelming surprise. He looked at her very gravely across the desk.
"No, that was the man who has wrecked my life," he said. "I've got him through them at last, I do believe."
And his eyes flashed their unworthy triumph.
"You could actually give him your horse!"
"I wish I could. It would be missed in a minute. No, he's only just to run the gauntlet on it, and I shall find it at the first gate. But what is it, Moya? You came for something?" and he was a miserable man once more.
"I'm ashamed to say why I came—but I will!" cried Moya in a low voice. "I did not want you to be found out through my own brother. He suspected the man was in here—I don't know why. He was going to watch the store all night, and I was watching it for him while he changed, and the light under the door——"
Rigden held up his hand.
"Hush!" he said. "Here is your brother."
Theodore was more than decent; he was positively gorgeous in striped and tasselled silk. He stood in the doorway with expressive eyebrows and eloquent nostrils, looking from Moya to Rigden until his gaze settled upon the latter. It was almost an innocuous gaze by then.