“One moment, please,” he said. “I want you to tell your sister that she has thoroughly—disillusioned me.”
“I’ll do that,” she assured him, and he could not help but regard her airy self-possession as the most surprising factor in a remarkable situation.
“And you, too,” he went on. “Something has happened to you since last night. Somehow you are—harder. Forgive me if I choose unpleasant adjectives.”
She hesitated before replying. Perhaps she felt the quiet scorn underlying the words.
“Where my unhappy family is concerned, the forgiveness must come wholly from you,” she said at last. “May I go now, Mr. Maseden? Once more, thank you for all that you have done and will do. Remember, when this miserable affair reaches the newspapers, it is not your reputation that will suffer, but the woman’s!”
She left him gazing blankly after her. There was a tense vibrato in the tone of the girl’s voice that touched some responsive chord in the man’s breast.
Then he became aware that he was soaked to the skin, and the wind was piercingly cold.
He murmured a phrase strongly reminiscent of the Americano who took hunting trips into the interior of Central America, and hurried to his cabin, where he stripped and rubbed his limbs to a glow before turning in.