"Telling you the truth? How could you suspect me of such a thing! No, my good friend; no woman ever tells a man the whole truth when she can help it. I didn't find your money, and I didn't lock it up in poppa's vault: I am merely playing a part in a deep and diabolical plot to——"
Griswold forgot that he was her poor beneficiary; forgot that she had taken him in as her guest; forgot, in the mad joy of the reactionary moment, everything that he should have remembered—saw nothing, thought of nothing save the flushed face with its glorious eyes and tempting lips: the eyes and lips of the daughter of men.
She broke away from him hotly after he had taken the flushed face between his hands and kissed her; broke away to drop into the chair at the other side of the table, hiding the flashing eyes and the burning cheeks and the quivering lips in the crook of a round arm which made room for itself on the narrow table by pushing the japanned money-box off the opposite edge.
It was the normal Griswold who picked up the box and put it in the other chair, gravely and methodically. Then he stood before her again with his back to the wall, waiting for what every gentle drop of blood in his veins was telling him he richly deserved. His punishment was long in coming; so long that when he made sure she was crying, he began to invite it.
"Say it," he suggested gently, "you needn't spare me at all. The only excuse I could offer would only make the offence still greater."
She looked up quickly and the dark eyes were swimming. But whether the tears were of anger or only of outraged generosity, he could not tell.
"Then there was an excuse?" she flashed up at him.
"No," he denied, as one who finds the second thought the worthier; "there was no excuse."
She had found a filmy bit of lace-bordered linen at her belt and was furtively wiping her lips with it.
"I thought perhaps you might be able to—to invent one of some sort," she said, and her tone was as colorless as the gray skies of an autumn nightfall. And then, with a childlike appeal in the wonderful eyes: "I think you will have to help me a little—out of your broader experience, you know. What ought I to do?"