"You sacrificed my gift of violets, so we are quits."
"After this we shall scarcely need any memento of the day—who could ever forget?" Then with a little thrill of joy: "But I've my Pilgrim all the same." She touched the book lovingly as he held it, and he was aware of her movement as of a caress. It was his gift to her, and what a world of affection in this implication of the value she set on it!
XXIII
They found the theatre easily, and, from their snug box, enjoyed a most lurid melodrama, which amply redeemed the promise of the hoarding, and was played by a vigorous company who seemed in no wise dismayed by yawning spaces and a thin scattering of audience. Nay, the thrills were even more than the adventurers had reckoned on, for pistol shots suddenly rang out in the third act, and Lady Betty clutched hard at the curtain of the box. She presently realised, however, that the iniquitous foreign nobleman with the fur overcoat and large moustachios, whose veiled hand had directed the remorseless persecution of the good and righteous, had at last paid for his misdeeds, and with this passing of the villain Lady Betty found that her sense of poetic justice was abundantly satisfied; though the luckless heroine, appearing on the scene just then, and incautiously picking up the fallen pistol, was at once arrested as the manifest murderess. Then the curtain went down, and Lady Betty rose.
"We must not stay to the end. Our day is over, and I want to give you the promised souvenir of our brief friendship."
There was a catch in her voice, and he understood that the sob had been suppressed with difficulty. He felt it was for him now to be strong; to set the note of stoic resignation, even as she had led off their adventures with a mood that had made this day the most wonderful of all his life.
"Ah, your strange, strange souvenir!" he laughed. "You must admit I have waited patiently."
"It was very wicked of me," she admitted. "But I shall keep you tortured with curiosity till the moment I give it to you. I have it at home. We had better drive back all the way, if we can find a vehicle."