"You—you opened the package?" he went on, once more pushing the importunate devil aside.
"Naturally. How else would I have known that it was worth locking up?"
Her coolness astounded him. If she knew the whole truth—and the demon at his ear was assuring him that she must know it—she must also know that she was confronting a great peril; the peril of one who voluntarily shuts himself into a trap with the fear-maddened wild thing for which the trap was baited and set. He was steadying himself with a hand on the table when he said: "Well, you opened the package; what did you find out?"
"What did I find out?" He heard her half-hesitant repetition of his query, and for one flitting instant he made sure that he saw the fear of death in the wide-open eyes that were lifted to his. But the next instant the eyes were laughing at him, and she was going on confidently. "Of course, as soon as I untied the string I saw it was money—a lot of money; and you can imagine that I tied it up again, quickly, and didn't lose any more time than I could help in putting it away in the safest place I could think of. Every day since you began to get well, I've been expecting you to say something about it; but as long as you wouldn't, I wouldn't."
Slowly the blood came back into the saner channels, and the whispering demon at his ear grew less articulate. Was she telling the truth? Could it be possible that she had not opened the packet far enough to see and read the damning evidence of the printed bank-slips which, in a very bravado of carelessness, as he now remembered, he had neglected to remove and destroy? He was searching the dark eyes for the naked soul behind them when he ventured again.
"You—you and your father—must have thought it very singular that a sick man should be knocking about the country with so much money carried carelessly in a suit-case?"
"My father knows nothing about it; nor does any one else. And it wasn't my place to gossip or to wonder. I found it, and I took care of it for you. Are you glad, or sorry?"
He took the necessary forward step and stood before her. And his answer was no answer at all.
"Miss Grierson—Margery—are you telling me the truth?—all of it?" he demanded, seeking once again to pinion the soul which lay beyond the deepest depth of the limpid eyes.
Her laugh was as cheerful as a bird song.