"You must go back; I must see you safely to St. Agatha's," I said.
She turned, drawing the scarf close under her throat with a quick gesture, as though about to go. She laughed with more honest glee than I had known in her before, and I forgot her duplicity, forgot the bold game she was playing, and the consequences to which it must lead; my pulses bounded when a bit of her scarf touched my hand as she flung a loose end over her shoulder.
"My dear Mr. Donovan, you propose the impossible! We are foes, you must remember, and I can not accept your escort."
"But I have a guard about the house; you are likely to get into trouble if you try to pass through. I must ask you to remember our pledge, that you are not to vex Miss Pat unnecessarily in this affair. To rouse her in the night would only add to her alarm. She has had enough to worry her already. And I rather imagine," I added bitterly, "that you don't propose killing her with your own hands."
"No; do give me credit for that!" she mocked. "But I shall not disturb your guards, and I shall not distress Aunt Pat by making a row in the garden trying to run your pickets. I want you to stay here five minutes—count them honestly—until I have had time to get back in my own fashion. Is it a bargain?" She put out her hand as she turned away—her left hand. As my fingers closed upon it an instant the emerald ring touched my palm.
"I should think you would not wear that ring," I said, detaining her hand, "it is too like hers; it is as though you were plighted to her by it."
"Yes; it is like her own; she gave it—"
She choked and caught her breath sharply and her hand flew to her face.
"She gave it to my mother, long ago," she said, and ran away down the path toward the school. A bit of gravel loosened by her step slipped after her to a new resting-place; then silence and the night closed upon her.
I threw myself upon the bench and waited, marveling at her. If I had not touched her hand; if I had not heard her voice; if, more than all, I had not talked with her of her father, of Miss Pat, of intimate things which no one else could have known, I should not have believed that I had seen Helen Holbrook face to face.