CHAPTER VIII
For a moment she could not speak; astonishment and a lurking sense of indignation held her mute. He meanwhile caressing and endeavouring to soothe Spartan, who frolicked about him in an uncouth dance of joy, went on quickly,—.
'I have followed you. I wanted to tell you all. Yesterday afternoon I saw that paragraph in Honesty; and last night I thrashed the writer of it within an inch of his life!'
She raised her eyes with a faint, deprecating smile.
'Yes,' he continued, with an involuntary clenching of his hands, 'I wish all the dirty scandalmongers of the Press were as sore and thoroughly well bruised as he is to-day! This morning I went to the editor of the paper on which he chiefly works, and told him the true character of the man he was employing, and how, under the name of "Brown" he was writing himself up in the press as the "poet" Aubrey Grovelyn, and a complete exposure of the rascal will be published to-morrow. This done, I drove straight to your house. The servants told me you had left early for Broadstairs, and that Lord Carlyon was out. Acting on an impulse, I came after you. We are preparing for a new piece at my theatre, as I daresay you have heard, and I am just now at comparative leisure. I knew nothing of your address, but this is a little place, and I imagined I should find you somewhere by the sea.'
He stopped abruptly, almost breathlessly, looking at her with a world of speechless anxiety in his eyes. She met his gaze with a most untroubled calm.
'I am afraid I do not quite understand you, Mr Valdis,' she said gently. 'What is it you are speaking of? The paragraph in Honesty? I have not given it a thought, I assure you, except to send it to my lawyers. They will know exactly what to do on my behalf. You have troubled yourself about it most needlessly. It is very good of you; but I thought you knew I never paid the slightest attention to what the journals say of me. They may call me a black woman, or a Cherokee squaw for all I care, and they may endow me with a dozen husbands and fifty grandchildren—I should never take the trouble to contradict them!' She laughed a little, then regarded him intently. 'You look quite ill. What have you been doing with yourself? Don't imagine I am angry with you for coming—I am delighted. I was just beginning to feel very lonely and to wish I had a friend.'
Her lip trembled suspiciously, but she turned her head aside that he might not see the emotion in her face.
'I have always been your friend,' said Valdis, huskily, 'but—you were offended with me.'
She sighed.