He paused, and then asked in a low voice—
“May I tell what I saw to Lady Jennings?”
“For Heaven’s sake—no,” cried she hoarsely.
CHAPTER V
There was a long pause when this exclamation escaped the lips of Miss Davison.
She sat back, trembling and silent, staring out before her as if unconscious of the presence of Gerard Buckland, who, holding the side of the victoria with fingers which tightened as he stood, looked into the girl’s face with agony which he could not repress. For surely her exclamation was a confession! If she had no connection with the working-girl whom he had seen in the crowd on the night of the fête, why should she mind what he told Lady Jennings? Yet at his suggestion that he should speak to the old lady about what he had seen, Rachel had shown the most helpless terror.
She presently recovered her composure, sat up in the carriage and smiled faintly.
“I don’t know,” she said, “why I should mind your telling Lady Jennings whatever you please. But it is, perhaps, a little disconcerting to be frankly and candidly disbelieved, and the experience is new and strange to me.”
Gerard hesitated what to say.
“All I want to say to her,” he said, in a low voice which he could not keep steady, “is that I think you do rash things, and that you want someone to take care of you, as you are too reckless as to what you do yourself.”