"No!" Isabel denied.
"I'll report, Miss Rose," Rupert asserted with brevity.
The keen black eyes and the deep-blue ones met, and read each other. Flavia took a step forward and held out her hand.
"It is not probable that we shall meet again, ever. Thank you," she said.
It would not have been possible to bribe Rupert into silence, but Flavia had done better. She knew, and the mechanician knew, as he touched her soft fingers, that he would keep to himself the knowledge that she had elevated to a confidence—the knowledge that she loved Allan Gerard, and was not loved in return.
So it happened that when Rupert returned to the Westbury farmhouse, he literally repeated Flavia's dictated message and contributed nothing of additional information or detail—except that he made one dry comment before retiring for the night.
"There's just one of the Rose family that ain't got any yellow streaks," he volunteered.
"Who?" was asked absently.
The response to his letter had left Gerard paler than usual and very grave. He did not recognize in it the Flavia he knew; the girl who had watched her brother with such rich lavishness of affection, the girl whose most innocent eyes had held the possibilities of all Corrie's ardent young passion without his impulsive faults, and whose warmth of nature had drawn him as a fireside draws a wanderer. He would not doubt her for such slight cause, he would wait for morning and her further answer, but he felt a premonitory dread and discouragement. He had expected so much more than he would now admit to himself. He even had thought vaguely, unreasoningly eager as a wistful boy, that she might come to him with Corrie that evening, that he might see and touch her.