“You’d believe me through anything, Louise?” he stammered. “You can’t mean all that—all that——”
He found himself inarticulate, too. Groping for words, he took both hands of Louise. She let him have them; she was close to him, with her head thrown back. There was no resistance left in her—almost no life, it seemed, except that her eyes lighted with a wonderful glow, and when he kissed her he felt her lips cling passionately to his.
While that minute lasted the whole world spun round him. Then Louise stepped away from him, with an intense, quick exclamation of fright. Jackson Power was coming down the path among the pines. He had certainly seen them.
CHAPTER XVII
COUNTERPLOT
If he had to be interrupted at that moment there was no man whom Lockwood would rather have seen. Young Jackson came on slowly; he was wearing his gay summer clothes, with his hands clenched in his coat pockets, perhaps on a pistol, and his face looked wretched and haggard.
He gave Lockwood a glance of mingled doubt and defiance, and turned upon his sister.
“What you doin’ here, Louise?” he said. “You better go back to the house.”
She hesitated, speechless, looking from one to the other of them in terror.
“Yes, you’d better go, Miss Power,” Lockwood put in. “I want to have a talk with your brother. He’s just the man I wanted to see—about the things we were discussing. Don’t be afraid. It’ll be all right.”
Louise still hesitated, not reassured, and then started without a word up the pathway. Lockwood saw her looking nervously over her shoulder till she was out of sight.