"Mr. Steel, we dared not. We wanted your advice, and nothing more. Even now I am afraid I am saying too much. There is a withering blight over yonder house that is beyond mere words. And twice gallant gentlemen have come forward to our assistance. Both of them are dead. And if we had dragged you, a total stranger, into the arena, we should morally have murdered you."
"Am I not within the charmed circle now?" David smiled.
"Not of our free will," Ruth said, eagerly. "You came into the tangle with Hatherly Bell. Thank Heaven you have an ally like that. And yet I am filled with shame—"
"My dear young lady, what have you to be ashamed of?"
Ruth covered her face with her hands for a moment and David saw a tear or two trickle through the slim fingers. He took the hands in his, gently, tenderly, and glanced into the fine, grey eyes. Never had he been moved to a woman like this before.
"But what will you think of me?" Ruth whispered. "You have been so good and kind and I am so foolish. What can you think of a girl who is all this way from home at midnight? It is so—so unmaidenly."
"It might be in some girls, but not in you," David said, boldly. "One has only to look in your face and see that only the good and the pure dwell there. But you were not afraid?"
"Horribly afraid. The very shadows startled me. But when I discovered your errand to-night I was bound to come. My loyalty to Enid demanded it, and I had not one single person in the world whom I could trust."
"If you had only come to me, Miss Ruth—"
"I know, I know now. Oh, it is a blessed thing for a lonely girl to have one good man that she can rely upon. And you have been so very good, and we have treated you very, very badly."