With a sudden desire to end the talk, she increased the pace at which they were proceeding. Dare, as he kept step with her, maintained a constrained silence. He felt inadequate to cope with the ugly, sinister turn this affair had taken. He did not know what to say to the girl. There was nothing he could say that might not give fresh offence. She glanced up at him frowningly, incensed at this show of mute disapproval, and remarked:
“I’ve told you things it would have been wiser to have kept to myself. I don’t know why I told you. You must treat what I have said as confidential, please.”
“I can’t promise that,” he answered. “But I will keep your name out of this business as far as it is possible to do so. After all, there is nothing that you have told me that was not bound to come out. You couldn’t marry a man who is known to have a wife and family, without the whole story coming to light. As soon as the facts are known Arnott will have to take his trial on a charge of bigamy.”
She turned pale as she listened to him. It was borne in upon her that this man was going to prove a determined and implacable enemy. She felt instinctively that he meant to oppose her with all his strength.
“She will never prosecute him,” she said, sullenly defiant.
“She won’t need to,” he answered convincingly. “The Crown will do that.”
“You are trying to intimidate me,” she exclaimed with sudden passion. “You have no right to threaten me.”
He looked at her deliberately with a faint uplift of his brows.
“I am doing nothing of the sort,” he answered. “I am merely making a plain statement of facts in order to show you what you will bring on the man you talk of marrying if you carry out your determination to encourage him in his cruel desertion of the woman he married. Only through you will the story of his crime ever come to be known.”
She walked on with lowered gaze, making no reply.