“Has the letter gone, Maddie?”
She nodded her head.
“Then I must write again at once—myself—to Gertrude Englewood to make her promise on her honour never to tell what you wrote. Even if I thought she would believe it—and I am not sure that she would—I could never allow myself to be cleared in her eyes now.”
Madeline stared at him. Had the sunstroke affected his brain?
“Despard,” she said, “what do you mean?”
He turned his haggard face towards her.
“I don’t know how to tell you,” he said. “I wish I need not, but as you know so much I must. I did see her, Madeline. I met her when I was strolling about the shrubbery over there. She was quite alone and no one near. It seemed to have happened on purpose, and—I told her all.”
“You proposed to her?”
He nodded.
“As—as Miss Fforde, or as—” began Mrs