She came down to greet Morena, and he saw regretfully the sad change in her face and bearing which his arrival caused. Bridget was sent to the kitchen. Jane made apologies, and sitting on the ladder step she looked up at him with the look of some one who expects a blow.
“What is it now, Mr. Morena? Have the lawyers begun to—”
He had purposely kept her in the dark, purposely neglected her, left her to loneliness, in the hope of furthering the purposes of Prosper Gael.
“I haven’t come to discuss that, Jane. Soon I hope to have good news for you. But to-day I’ve come to give you a hint—a warning, in fact—to prepare you for what I am sure will be a shock.”
“Yes?” She was flushed and breathing fast. Her fingers were busy with the feather-duster on her knee and her eyes were still waiting.
“I had a visitor this morning—Pierre Landis, of Wyoming.”
She rose, came to him, and clutched his arm. “Pierre? Pierre?” She looked around her, wild as a captured bird. “Oh, I must go! I must go!”
“Jane, my child,”—he put his arm about her, held her two hands in his,—“you must do nothing of the kind. If you don’t want this Pierre to find you, if you don’t want him to come into your life, there’s an easy, a very simple, way to put an end to his pursuit. Don’t you know that?”
She stared up at him, quivering in his arm. “No. What is it? How can I? Oh, he mustn’t see me! Never, never, never! I made that promise to myself.”
“Jane, you say yourself that you are changed, that you are not the girl he wants to find.”