However that may be, I was so fascinated in watching her—there was one stray curl which lay like a strand of woven gold upon her brow. Confound it! It's all very well for the fellow who writes fiction for a living to write about people's emotions. He is cold himself. If he were like me, and wished to describe his own feelings, he might find himself in the same difficulty as myself, and give up the attempt.
The Colonel's voice droned on. Suddenly I awoke to the consciousness that he was speaking of me. I think it was the fact of his daughter looking at me which recalled me to attention.
"Sutgrove had just looked back to see if I was comfortable, when he saw another car on the road behind us. We had not long passed through Radlett. You know the straight stretch of road just past the new Dutch barn on the left——"
My attention did not wander any more, and you may imagine my astonishment at hearing the Colonel describe in minute detail everything which had befallen us upon the previous evening. He could tell a story when he liked, and on this occasion his description of the shamefaced manner in which Winter had scrambled out of his car, and had handed over his valuables to the Motor Pirate, was so ludicrous that I was compelled to laugh at the description. When my turn came to be described, Miss Maitland and Mannering were just as much amused, but I am afraid that my attempt to participate in their mirth was rather forced.
When the story was done, Miss Maitland rose from her seat at her father's feet, and, putting a hand on each of his shoulders—
"You dear, delightful old fibber!" she remarked. "I don't believe you dreamed that at all. You couldn't." Then she wheeled round on me. "Now tell me, Mr. Sutgrove, didn't that dream of father's really happen to you last night?"
What course was open to me but confession? I admitted the truth of the story, and the Colonel was so choked with merriment, that I feared lest he should be stricken with apoplexy.
"The cream of the joke," he explained, when he recovered his powers of speech, "was that neither Winter nor Sutgrove had the slightest idea that I was foxing. I intended to inform them directly we were clear of the Pirate; but when I heard them discussing the matter, and determining to keep silence out of tenderness for my reputation, I could not resist keeping up the joke."
"I should think it was their own reputations they were thinking about," said his daughter. "To submit so tamely to one man is not a very heroic proceeding."
I heard Mannering chuckle, and I felt mad. But I fancy it was not Mannering's amusement, but my own consciousness of the truth of the criticism that galled.