She took her hands down from her face, and spoke the words aloud:
“I called him a cheat! I called him a—coward! Oh, what am I to do?”
The man who had been sitting in the swinging couch, and whom she had not seen, strolled across the verandah and came directly down the steps to where the unhappy Hilda was crouched.
“Miss McPherson! Can I do anything for you?”
Hilda was in too much pain to feel either surprise or resentment for the intrusion. She said piteously:
“I called him a cheat! a coward!”
“A coward—him!”
Duncan Mallison’s face darkened with an almost angry red.
“You may as well know this much at least,” he said roughly. “The man you called a coward won the Victoria Cross for an act of sublime heroism during the war.”
Hilda stood up. She looked beaten and small. She was wrenching her hands together as she backed toward the door. Her lips were quivering. She tried to speak, but the words could not come, and she shook her head dumbly.