"I suppose you include me in your list of suspects," she blurted out as he did not speak. "Why don't you say so at once? Your questions certainly suggest it."
"Do they?" he asked, with a smile which irritated her.
"Yes, they do. What else do they suggest? It would be quite in keeping with the rest of the business—you riding out here to ask me pointless questions while the people most likely to have been concerned in the robbery are left alone. They are known, I suppose you will say, where I am a stranger, someone you have never seen before——"
"You are wrong," he interrupted, still smiling; "I have seen you before."
Her eyes concentrated on his with keen intensity.
"When? Where?" she asked sharply.
"We were fellow-passengers by a coach four or five months back. You have forgotten me, but I"—now that the personal note had been struck, the note he wished so much to sound and yet shrank from, he was almost carried away by it; by an effort he checked himself, and instead of telling her all that the meeting had meant for him, he added, "I rarely forget a face when I have once seen it."
She flashed a swift glance at him, reading in his eyes, in his face, in his attitude, the confirmation of what she knew from the tone of his voice.
"But you—you do not—remember me," he said slowly as she did not reply. He saw the glance, saw the fleeting questioning light in her eyes, and with the fatuity bred of love-blindness, misread it.
"I do remember—distinctly," she answered softly. "I recognised you as you came on to the verandah. I thought it was you who had forgotten—or did not wish to remember."