"Nothing has ever occurred, no slightest whisper or suggestion from Mrs. Atterbury or her friends to lead you to feel that something was going on which you could not understand? Think, Miss Shaw! You are not stupid; surely some inkling of the truth must have reached you."
"Mr. Ross, you refuse to speak plainly and I cannot imagine what you are hinting, but I can see that you are really in earnest, and there is a terrible mistake somewhere. Mrs. Atterbury's friends are people of the world, learned men and brilliant women whom it is an education as well as a pleasure for a girl like me to meet. Believe me, you are laboring under an absurd illusion! I am very happy in my position and I would not think of giving it up and going away for no reason."
"I can easily obtain another for you," he pleaded. "You will not suffer by the change. This woman is nothing to you; surely you would be willing to relinquish this for a better position—"
"Nothing could induce me to leave Mrs. Atterbury." Betty spoke with calm finality, but across her face had flitted unbidden that hardened, crafty expression which robbed it of its candid charm, and sudden, passionate determination flashed from her eyes. It was gone in an instant but not before Herbert Ross had grasped its significance and his latent suspicion burst into full flower.
'They are all tarred with the same brush.' The Chief had spoken with a wisdom which no puerile emotion had stultified, and Ross's heart turned to lead within him.
"Then there is nothing further for me to say. I have warned you, I have done my utmost to protect you, but if you wilfully refuse to listen to me you must abide by the consequences." His voice trembled in spite of himself and he cried out in bitter denunciation: "There must be some desperate game of your own which you are playing here! If you are not an active accomplice of this woman, what hidden purpose holds you to this house, what common bond links you with these people? Who are you, what have you done that others should hunt you down, and what are you doing now?"
The girl's face blanched swiftly, but her eyes blazed a menace and she drew herself up to her full height before him.
"I have listened patiently to your vague melodramatic attack upon my employer and her friends, but you have gone too far, Mr. Ross, when you extend your mad accusations to me! You have followed me, spied upon me, but this final insult is too much to be endured! I must ask you not to annoy me again. Let me pass, please!"
He stepped back almost mechanically as with her head proudly erect she swept by him and on down the Drive. His gaze followed her until she disappeared, his thoughts a chaos of conflicting emotion.
The swift light which had glowed in her eyes at the moment of their meeting only to be so quickly effaced, her refusal of his proffered hand, the attitude of disdainful aloofness which she has maintained, until driven to the wall, and then her simulation of naïve innocence—what could these changing moods portend? She had striven desperately to disarm his suspicion and when that failed had met him with passionate defiance.