“No, dear, I didn’t want to worry you. And I—I wanted it to come from you—the gift—of yourself. I wanted to teach you to love me—unaided. But I couldn’t—so I turned to him—to Uncle Dick to help me—as I always turned to him for everything from the day mother died. Oh, Helen, can’t you, won’t you, don’t you see how I love you? I have always loved you.”
“Please—not now——” Her face was very white. “I can’t talk to you now. I must have time—to think—we—we can talk—another time.” She got up unsteadily and moved to the door.
He opened it simply, and made not even a gesture to delay her.
Alone—he breathed a long sigh of mingled feelings. There was satisfaction in it—and other things, satisfaction that she was no longer here in this danger zone of his where the confession might be after all, and might be found at any moment to confront and undo him. And there was satisfaction too that he had come a little nearer prosperity in his hard wooing than he had ever come before. She had not repulsed him—not at least as she had done before. Perhaps—perhaps—he would win her yet—and—if he did—if he did!
Standing by the table he rested his hand there, and it just brushed the piece of jade. He drew his hand back quickly. Helen had desired that no one but she herself should ever touch it again. Not for much would he have disobeyed her in this small thing. Her every wish was law to Stephen Pryde, except only when some wish of hers threatened his two great passions.
The paper—the cursed paper—must have gone to cinder. Surely it had been so. He searched a drawer and found notepaper—and made a sheet to the size—as he remembered it—of the missing piece. He laid it on the table, brushed it off with a convulsive motion of his arm. Brief as his instant of waiting was, it trembled his lip with suspense. Thank God! Thank God! The paper had fallen on to the glowing asbestos. It caught. It burned. It was gone—absolutely obliterated—destroyed as if it had never been.
He sank down into Richard Bransby’s chair, and began to laugh. Long and softly the hysterical laughter of his relief—sadder than any sobbing—crept and shivered through the room.
The green Joss blinked and winked in the flickering of the high-turned fire. The pink jade lotus grew redder in the crimson laving of the setting sun.
CHAPTER XXIV
Of course any feeling of security built upon so slight foundation, and concerning a matter of such paramount and vital moment, could but be transient. With the next daylight, dread and anxiety reasserted themselves. And Pryde was again the victim of restlessness and uncertainty.