All his calm is gone, all his haughtiness of bearing; with one swift movement he snatches her to his heart, and she rests in his embrace, shocked at her own boldness, and unspeakably happy.
Who dare intrude upon a lover's interview? Who dares to snatch the first coy love words from a maiden's lips, and give them to a world grown old in love making, and appraising each tender word by its own calloused old heart?
For the time all is forgotten, save one fact, they love each other well.
By and by, other thoughts come, forcing their way like unwelcome guests.
"Constance," he says, after a long interval, "you have made me anything but indifferent to my fate. Now I shall begin to struggle for my freedom; but—do you realize what a network of false testimony they have woven about me?"
"Do I realize it?" she cried. "Yes, far more than you do, or can, and—you said something about Frank Lamotte. Has he sought to injure you?"
"Constance, I thought you knew," turning upon her a look of surprise. "I thought you knew his guilt. Who, but Frank Lamotte, could gain access to my office, to purloin my handkerchief and my knife? He had a duplicate key, and—I found that key in the old cellar beside the body of John Burrill."
The look of perplexity on her face deepens into one of actual distress.
Could it be, that after all, Frank had forestalled that other one?