"She asked me," he said, "if I was your husband."
"You—you—! Did you let her think——" cried Susan in a choking voice, fighting against a strange sense of the inevitable that his look inspired.
"Oh, she had been thinking hard," he said. "A runaway stranger, calling herself Miss—Grahame, was it?—I got it wrong—and wearing a wedding ring. What more likely—? I had the part thrust on me directly I showed my face."
He dropped the half-jesting air that had masked his excitement, and came nearer. She shivered a little at his approach.
"Daren't you trust me, Susan?" he said. "I'm not a Pharisee.—Why, I guessed it from the beginning. Don't you remember how I asked you to let me help you if you wanted a friend?—And all the while I was watching. Do you think I can't guess how Barnaby drove his bargain, careless of you, trading on your helplessness in the shock of his return? What did he care that it was hard on you, so long as it suited his selfish purpose?"
"He was good to me," she said. It was no use denying anything any more.
"Are you grateful to him—still?" said Rackham.
She turned away her face.
Something in her attitude kindled in him that instinct of protection that had from the first struggled in his soul with admiration. Had he not felt a consuming rage that it had not been his to battle for her, to turn round on Barnaby and his world, all pointing the finger of scorn at her for a cheat?—He would have liked them to do their worst, would have liked to defy them.... Well, that occasion was his at last.
Barnaby had nearly fooled him. The extraordinary course he had taken had at first made Rackham curse himself for an imaginative ass. But he had been right. His time had come.... And Barnaby was defeated.