He watched the play of the lights in her brilliant face. When she smiled, her teeth seemed perfection; and her eyes fairly set him dreaming.
“I was pleased,” she said. “Indeed, I was quite delighted. And yet I was frightened. I could not altogether—”
She hesitated painfully, now; so Kenyon finished the sentence for her.
“You could not altogether trust me,” said he, good-naturedly. “But that was only natural. One seldom trusts, at the outset, persons whom one has suspected of affiliation with the enemy. It’s a sort of military instinct. Perhaps you get it from an ancestor, who may have been a soldier.”
She laughed at this.
“And you must have thought me a most unaccountable person, all along!” she cried. “Even to the very end I no doubt seemed a sort of fay, appearing so strangely, as I did. Take the incident of a few nights ago at the old house outside South Norwalk, for example.”
“I was astonished when you darted out so suddenly. But I had an intimation that some unlooked-for person was on the ground, before us. One of Forrester’s men saw, or heard, you in the road.”
“I heard his signal,” said Dallas, “and oh, I was so frightened. But I hid myself and did not answer; later I stole away up the road.”
“But why did you walk all that distance; it was a good five miles.”
“I dreaded attracting attention by engaging a carriage. I thought Forrester might have someone on the watch.”