Presently she started up with a faint cry. She walked across the room and back again. She paused at the bureau, muttering––
“It can’t be! It can’t be!” she said to herself, in an agony of terror. “George is too good, too honest. Ah!”
Her love cried out for the man, but reason checked her while her heart tried to rush her into extravagant hopefulness. Iredale had admitted the smuggling. 269 She had seen with her own eyes the doings at the graveyard. And therein lay the key to everything. Leslie had said so with his dying breath. But as this thought came to her it was chased away by her love in a fresh burst of fervour. She could not believe it. There must be some awful, some horrible mistake.
Slowly her mind steadied itself; the long years of calmness which she had spent amidst the profound peace of the prairie helped her. She gripped herself lest the dreadful thought of what she had heard should drive her to madness. She went over what she had been told with a keen examination. She listened to her own arguments for and against the man she loved. She went back to the time when Leslie had told her of his “coup.” She remembered everything so well. She paused as she recollected her dead lover’s anger at George’s coming to the party. And, for a moment, her heart almost stood still. She asked herself, had she misinterpreted his meaning? Had there been something underlying his expressed displeasure at George’s coming which related to what he knew of his, George Iredale’s, doings at the ranch? Every word he had said came back to her. She remembered that he had finished up his protest with a broken sentence.
“––And besides–––”
There was a significance in those words now which she could not help dwelling upon. Then she put the thought from her as her faith in her lover re-asserted itself. But the effort was a feeble one; her love was being overwhelmed by the damning evidence.
She moved restlessly from the bureau to the window. The curtained aperture looked out upon 270 the far-reaching cornfields, which were now only a mass of brown stubble. In the distance, beyond the dyke, she could see the white steam of the traction-engine and the figures of many men working. The carts and racks were moving in the picture, but for all else the view was one of peaceful, unbroken calm.
Her mind passed on to the time when the party had broken up. She remembered how in searching for Iredale she had found the two men quarrelling, or something in that nature. Again Leslie had been on the verge of telling her something, but the moment had gone by and he had kept silence. She tried to deny the significance of these things, but reason checked her, and her heart sank to zero. And she no longer tried to defend her lover.
Then came the recollection of that picnic. The screech-owls; the boats laden with their human freight moving suspiciously over the waters of the great lake. She thought of the graveyard and the ghostly procession. And all the time her look was hardening and the protests of her heart slowly died out. If she had doubted Hervey’s words, all these things of which she now thought were facts evident to her own senses. The hard light in her eyes changed to the bright flash of anger. This man had come to her with his love, she reminded herself, and she had yielded to him all that she had power to bestow. The brown eyes grew darker until their glowing depths partially resembled those of her brother.
As the anger in her heart rose her pain increased, and she recoiled in horror at the thought that this man had dared to offer her his love while his hands 271 were stained with black crime. At best he was a law-breaker; at the worst he was–––