"You—followed me here?"
"Yes," he said, unsmiling. "I had to see you before I went—on matters of business—and—"
She was nearer to him now: for the first time he could see her eyes. In them lay a faint shadowiness like the memory of shed tears; but sweeping over that and blotting it out he saw a look which struck him like a blow.
"There is nothing for you to see me about, I think—any more," she said with a little laugh. "The game is up—isn't that what they say in melodrama? My mother has told me all about it."
"Your mother has told you!" he echoed stupidly, as one to whom the words conveyed no meaning.
"She had not expected to see me so soon again, when I went off to lunch on my father's yacht. The surprise was a little too much for her. You must try to forgive her," said Mary, and punctuated the observation with a small, final bow. "Will you open the gate for me?"
"No," said Varney, pulling himself sharply together. "Not like that."
The shock of her voice and look, even more than her words, had been stunning in their first unexpectedness. But now he remembered, with infinite relief, that of course she did not understand the matter at all; of course she would speak and look very differently when he had made his explanation.
"You think," Varney said, "that I mind your knowing about our poor little plot—that I am found out and my plans are all upset? How on earth could you think that? Why, that's all like something in another life. Don't you know what my being here at this moment means? The thing is all over, Miss Carstairs—all past and done with an hour before you ever saw your mother. I gave it up voluntarily. When the time came, just now on the yacht, I found out that it was impossible—unthinkable—I couldn't do it. The game was up then. That is one thing that your mother could not tell you, and it was to tell you this, and all the rest of it, that I followed you here."
She stood on the other side of the gate, hardly an arm's length from him, looking at him; a figure so pretty, so dainty, so extremely decorative that she seemed incapable of giving anything but pleasure. But in the eyes that met his own so unwaveringly, he read at once the contradiction of this.