"She did. How, I don't know. He doesn't say: doesn't say much, in fact. But she knows that if he's put into the witness-box he can't deny it. You know, she played—well, you might fairly call it a shabby trick on me; and I never blamed her. I'm fair game. But Denis is quite another pair of shoes. I don't know how I'm going to forgive her for meddling with him. You see his letter."
Lettice read the few stiff phrases in which Denis owned that he had let his friend's secret escape. He said little about Dorothea, not a word about himself.
"I call that one of the most pathetic things I've ever read," said Gardiner, with far more feeling than he had shown for his own misfortune. "I'd have owned up voluntarily, I swear I would, sooner than have this happen. It doesn't do to play tricks of this sort on a fellow like Denis. They cut too deep. It's like ill-treating a child. Oh, it was a beastly thing to do!"
"It was a damnable thing to do."
Strong words, to suit strong feelings. Lettice's soft lips were grim. Gardiner was disposed to feel sorry for Dorothea. But there was nothing to be done, nothing; Lettice laid by her wrath in silence and brought back her mind to Gardiner's case.
"What are you going to do, then?"
"I? Oh, I'm off. Didn't I tell you the police are after me?"
"The police?"
"Chasing me out of Woodlands on bikes. You see this letter of Denis's, which was evidently written post-haste after Mrs. Trent got the truth out of him, is dated Tuesday, the eighth; which was the very day I got Tom's wire calling me home. It must have gone out to Rochehaut and lain there nearly a week, till I wrote for my mail to be forwarded. In the meantime I presume Mrs. Trent took her tale to the police. She can be quite temperate and convincing when she likes; besides, she has an uncle in the Home Office, Sir Thomas Felton, who's no end of a swell—I heard that quite by accident the other day—and he no doubt pulled some wires. The magistrates would grant a warrant; then I imagine a detective started for Rochehaut, found me gone, got my address in England and came straight back. At any rate, this morning, not ten minutes after I'd got Denis's bomb-shell, a couple of bobbies turned up at the vicarage to arrest me. I evaded out of the back door as they came in at the front, and got away on Tom's bike. They don't know I'm riding, so I hope they'll waste time looking for a pedestrian. I'll stay here till it's dark if you'll put up with me, bike on to Southampton to-night and work my way out to South America. I'm no amateur, you see—I've done it before."
Lettice's face did not usually express her feelings, but as Gardiner proceeded with his tale, it woke up. She said: