"You were indeed. It didn't occur to you that it might have been—well, somebody with more right."
Her arm tightened, but she said nothing. The unconscious James went on. "I was wrong. A man has no right to kiss a woman unawares—in the dark. Even if it's his wife. She'll always want to know who it was, and she's bound to find out. And he'll get no thanks for it, either." Then it became necessary for Lucy to thank him.
"Mind you, my dear," he told her. "I have no quarrel with Jimmy Urquhart up to now. You say he's in love with you, and I think that he is. I've thought so for some time, and I confess that I didn't relish the idea that he should be out here with us. But since we are in for confessions I'll make one more. If he hadn't been in love with you I don't believe that I should be—as I am now."
Lucy laughed—the laugh of a woman rich. "Then I'm very much obliged to him," she said.
But Urquhart was harder to convince than James.
CHAPTER XX
FAIR WARNING
Vera Nugent, a brisk woman of the world, with a fondness for vivid clothing and a Spanish air which went oddly with it, took the trouble one fine day to tackle her brother. "Look here, Jimmy," she said as they breasted a mountain pass, "are you quite sure what you are up to with these people?"