“I don’t think you need be afraid,” she answered affectionately. “But Eliot!” She paused in consternation, then went on quickly: “What did he think when he found you there, Cara? Do you know what he thought?”
Cara’s expression hardened a little.
“Yes, I know,” she said shortly.
“And I can guess,” returned Ann. She sprang up from her chair with all her old characteristic impetuosity. “And he’s not going to think—that—a moment longer. I suppose”—her voice seemed to glow and the eyes she bent on Cara were wonderfully tender—“I suppose you wouldn’t explain because you wanted to keep me out of it?” Then, as Cara nodded assent: “I thought so! Well, I’m not going to be kept out of it. I’m going straight across to Heronsmere—now, at once—to tell Eliot the whole truth.”
She swept Cara’s protest royally aside, and within a few minutes Cara herself was on her way home and Billy Brewster flinging the harness on the pony’s back at unprecedented speed.
But Dick Turpin was spared the necessity of making the whirlwind rush to Heronsmere which loomed ahead of him, by the opportune appearance of Eliot himself at the Cottage gate.
Ann drew him quickly into the house.
“I was just coming over to see you,” she told him swiftly. “It’s—it’s about last night.”
His face darkened.
“About last night?” he repeated. “What about it?”