The room whirled a moment as she dealt this staggering blow. Billings, of the Bronx Loan and Trust Company, had said that Miss Dangerfield was peppery, but his employment of this trifling term only illustrated his weak command of the English language. It is not pleasant to be pilloried for undreamed-of crimes, and Ardmore’s ears tingled. He must plunge deeper and trust to the gods of chance to save him. He brought himself together with an effort, and spoke so earnestly that the words rang oddly in his own ears.
“Miss Dangerfield, you may call me anything you please, but I am not quite the scoundrel you think me. It’s true that I was not in New Orleans, and I never saw your father in my life. I came to Raleigh on a mission that has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Billings; he did not know I was coming. On the way here a message intended for your father came into my hands. It was thrown on the train at Kildare last night. I had gone out on the platform because the sleeper was hot, and a warning to your father to keep his hands off of Appleweight was given to me. Here it is. It seems to me that there is immediate danger in this, and I want to help you. I want to do anything I can for you. I didn’t come here to pry into your family secrets, Miss Dangerfield, honestly I didn’t!”
She took the piece of paper into her slim little hands and read it, slowly nodding her head, as if the words only confirmed some earlier knowledge of the threat they contained. Then she lifted her head, and her eyes were bright with mirth as Ardmore’s wondering gaze met them.
“Did you get the jug?”
“I got two jugs, to tell the truth; but when they seemed dissatisfied and howled for me to give one back, I threw off the buttermilk.”
“You threw back father’s buttermilk to the man who gave you the applejack? Oh! oh!”
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.