“Stop here a moment; the view over the Park is wonderful.” Rodgers leaned forward and pushed up the windshield to the farthest limit. “You can see better now.” But when Kitty slowed down at the side of the road she found him regarding her and not the moonlight on the rolling hills and valley before them.
“You meant it, Kitty; you do care for me?” he asked wistfully. “Really care?”
Kitty’s soft laugh held happiness behind it. “I care so much—” her voice dropped to a mere whisper and he had to lean still closer to catch what she said. “My love is yours, always—always.”
Rodgers held her in close embrace. “My beloved,” he murmured and he kissed her with a fervor which left her breathless.
“Ted,” she said, a little later. “Aunt Susan’s love letter haunts me. It told a pitiful story.”
He nodded soberly. “Perhaps that is what warped her nature,” he suggested. “James Leigh Wallace was an out-and-out scoundrel. He gambled his soul away—anything to gain money to lose in some gambling hell.”
“I never heard of him before,” she replied. “Now I understand Aunt Susan’s antipathy to his son. I thought it unreasoning dislike. Leigh—” she hesitated.
“I’ve been so jealous of Leigh,” Rodgers confessed. “Every one thought you were engaged.”
“People are such idiots!” she ejaculated, then added almost in a whisper, “It was always you, dear, never Leigh, that I cared for. He was with me because—because Nina Potter and I were together.”