“Oh, I know whom you take him for,” she said quickly. “The man you saw me with that day—the day when something happened at the stores.”
“Yes, yes,” cried he, surprised at her sudden touch of candor.
She smiled demurely.
“But that man,” she said, with a smile of irritating superior knowledge, “was not Mr. Jones at all. I swear it.”
“You swear!” faltered Gerard.
“Yes; I’m not at liberty to tell you that man’s name, but—it is not Cecil Jones.”
Gerard fell back, bewildered and wounded. He could not bear to face fresh proofs of her duplicity. But was he mistaken? Or was she forsworn?
CHAPTER XV
The last impression left upon Gerard Buckland’s mind as he went down the drive with Arthur Aldington after they had taken leave of the American family at the Priory, was that of a party of good-humored, unpretending, easy-mannered people, anxious to enjoy life and to make those around them enjoy it also.
The group on the door step of the old Elizabethan mansion, as seen partly in the moonlight and partly in the electric light which streamed through the open door of the house, was a striking and a charming one.