She met the savage gleam in his eyes wonderingly—two grateful tears blurring the vision of him whom she had feared to come to, and who now seemed to be a pillar of hope.
“You tell me you feel in duty bound to tell your sister,” he continued again, seating himself beside her. “Why? It would only worry her—uselessly.”
“She has been too happy over our coming great good fortune,” she explained. “We’ve made plans for the summer. These must be changed, you see. Even if I do regain the money—things will be no better for us than before.”
“Better wait,” replied Enoch. “I shall get at this matter at once. One thing—you are not to worry. No; I wouldn’t tell your sister if I were you. Promise me you won’t.”
For the first time the vestige of a smile lightened her anxious face. “Then I won’t tell Jane. Do you know it is the first thing I have ever kept from her in my whole life, Mr. Crane? We have never had a secret we have not shared.”
He took her frail hand comfortingly in his own.
“This is no longer your secret,” he declared. “It is mine.”
For some moments she was silent.
“Mr. Crane, if you only knew how grateful I am to you,” she tried to say and keep back the tears, “how my whole heart goes out in gratefulness to you——”
“If there is any one who ought to be grateful,” he returned, with a slow smile, “it is I—for your having come to me in time,” he added reassuringly. “One thing,” he continued seriously, “you must be extremely careful of—not to give him, should you meet him, the slightest suspicion that you know anything—that you doubt his honesty. What I intend to do is to interview this individual to-morrow; by to-morrow night I should have better news for you. There! now you are to think no more about it. Go to your room, my dear lady, and try and meet your sister as if nothing had happened. If you have to tell her a fib—do so. I’ll be responsible for it.”