Miss Jerry Dangerfield sat down and laughed; and Ardmore, glad of an opportunity to escape, found his hat and rushed from the house.
CHAPTER V MR. ARDMORE OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED
"She never did it; she never, never did!"
Mr. Ardmore, from a bench in the State House park, thus concluded a long reverie. It was late afternoon, and he had forgotten luncheon in his absorption. There was no manner of use in recurring again to that episode of the lonely siding. He had found the girl—(indubitably the girl)—but not the wink! Miss Jerry Dangerfield was not the winking sort; he was well satisfied on that point, and so thoroughly ashamed into the bargain that he resolved to lead a different life and be very heedful of the cry of the poor in the future. His emotions had never been taxed as to-day, and he hoped that he might never again suffer the torture he had experienced as he waited in the governor's drawing-room for Miss Dangerfield to appear. After that agony it had been a positive relief to be ordered out of the house. Her anger when she caught him lying about having met her father in New Orleans was superior to any simulated rage he had ever seen on the stage, and no girl with a winking eye would be capable of it. He was not clever; he knew that; but if he had had the brains of a monkey he would not have risked his foolish wits against those of a girl like Geraldine Dangerfield, who had led him into an ambush and then shot him to pieces.
"She threatened to have the servants throw me out!" he groaned. And her slight, tense figure rose before him, and her voice, still the voice of young girlhood, rang in his ears. As she read the threatening message from Kildare he had noted the fineness of her hands, the curve of her fair cheek, the wayward curls on her forehead, and he remembered all these things now, but more than anything else her wrath, the tiny fists, the flashing eyes as she confronted him. As he sat dejectedly on his park bench he was unaware that Miss Geraldine Dangerfield, walking hurriedly through the park on her way from the governor's mansion to the state house, passed directly behind him. His attitude was so eloquent of despair that it could not have failed to move a much harder heart than that of Miss Dangerfield, yet she made no sign; but a few minutes later the private secretary came out on the steps of the state house, and after a brief survey of the landscape crossed the lawn and called Ardmore by name.
"I beg your pardon, but Miss Dangerfield wished me to say that she'd like to see you for a minute. She's at the governor's office."
A prisoner, sentenced to death, and unexpectedly reprieved with the rope already on his neck, could not experience greater relief than that which brought Mr. Thomas Ardmore to his feet.
"You are sure of it—that there's no mistake?"