It brought the blood to the cheeks of Nelly as she hurried down the hill, for she recognized the pain that was in it; and it occurred to her that if the girl was in love with Jack Landis she was strangely interested in Donnegan also.
The thought came so sharply home to her that she paused abruptly on the way down the hill. After all, this Macon girl would be a very strange sort if she were not impressed by the little red-headed man, with his gentle voice and his fiery ways, and his easy way of making himself a brilliant spectacle whenever he appeared in public. And Nelly remembered, also, with the keen suspicion of a woman in love how weakly Donnegan had responded to her embrace this night. How absent-mindedly his arms had held her, and how numbly they had fallen away when she turned at the door.
But she shook her head and made the suspicion shudder its way out of her. Lou Macon, she decided, was just the sort of girl who would think Jack Landis an ideal. Besides, she had never had an opportunity to see Donnegan in his full glory at Milligan's. And as for Donnegan? He was wearied out; his nerves relaxed; and for the deeds with which he had startled The Corner and won her own heart he was now paying the penalty in the shape of ruined nerves. Pity again swelled in her heart, and a consuming hatred for the three murderers who lived in her father's house.
And when she reached her room again her heart was filled with a singing happiness and a glorious knowledge that she had saved the man she loved.
And Donnegan himself?
He had seen Lou and her father: he had heard that low cry of pain; and now he sat bowed again over his table, his face in his hands and a raging devil in his heart.
41
There was one complication which Nelly Lebrun might have foreseen after her pretended change of heart and her simulated confession to Joe Rix that she still loved the lionlike Lord Nick. But strangely enough she did not think of this phase: and even when her father the next morning approached her in the hall and tapping her arm whispered: "Good girl! Nick has just heard and he's hunting for you now!" Even then the full meaning did not come home to her. It was not until she saw the great form of Lord Nick stalking swiftly down the hall that she knew. He came with a glory in his face which the last day had graven with unfamiliar lines; and when he saw her he threw up his hand so that it almost brushed the ceiling, and cried out.