She sat motionless, her strained white hands gripping the chair arm.
"Under the cover of the dressing table, in the room there, where I slept, are the two letters that I read in my bed in the hospital—the one from you—the one from Barry Quinlevin. I left them there when I went away. Unless some one has removed them, they should be there now——"
In obedience to the suggestion, she rose and went quickly out into the hall and into the deserted room. Harry had not entered it nor had she even told him of the valises containing his impedimenta that had been sent down from headquarters. The letters were there. Trembling with uncertainty she found them and glanced at the familiar handwriting, her own and her father's, and then came back to the door of the studio. There she stood a moment, weighing the letters in her hands. Jim Horton stood as she had left him, leaning upon the mantel-shelf, his gaze upon the extinguished fire. It seemed that lost in his own gloomy reverie he had already forgotten her. Never in all the weeks that she had known him, not even when he had lain in his hospital bed—had he seemed a more pitiful figure than now—needing her as she—God help her—needed him. What did it matter what this letter contained? In her heart she knew that the only thing that mattered to her was the love that this man bore her. She had recognized it in the deep tones of his voice, which had thrilled her again, and in the attitude of submission which had anticipated the change in her sentiments.
It was a moment for decisions, like his moment in the hospital. She had only to tell him to go and she knew that he would have obeyed her. But like Jim Horton, she no longer had the strength. Some instinct told her that here in this outcast soldier—this splendid outcast—was a rock that she could cling to....
She glanced over the stair and then entering the studio quietly, slowly approached him, letters in hand.
"You wish me to read——?" she asked.
"Yes, please, Moira."
She glanced at him and then sank into the armchair and opened Barry Quinlevin's letter. For a long while there was no sound but the rustle of the paper in her fingers. At last he heard her stir slightly and glanced up at her. Her face was deathly pale.
"My father—de V—'The money has stopped coming'—What does it all mean?" she asked. "And what are those papers? What is the agency working against him? And what does he mean by putting the screws on?"
"It means that Barry Quinlevin is—is blackmailing the Duc de Vautrin—has been doing so for years," he said in a suppressed tone.