“Yes? Do you think so?” asked the girl, simply. “What does it matter if it can help Colin?
“This aunt of mine,” she presently continued, “was a poor woman, and it was while I was hiding in her house—because spies of Senor Menendez were searching for me—that I met—my husband. He was studying in Cuba the strange things he writes about, you see. And before I knew what had happened—I found I loved him more than all else in the world. It is so wonderful, that feeling,” she said, looking across at Val Beverley. “Do you know?”
The girl flushed deeply, and lowered her eyes, but made no reply.
“Because you are a woman, too, you will perhaps understand,” she resumed. “I did not tell him. I did not dare to tell him at first. I was so madly happy I had no courage to speak. But when”—her voice sank lower and lower—“he asked me to marry him, I told him. Nothing he could ever do would change my love for him now, because he forgave me and made me his wife.”
I feared that at last she was going to break down, for her voice became very tremulous and tears leapt again into her eyes. She conquered her emotion, however, and went on:
“We crossed over to the States, and Colin’s family who had heard of his marriage—some friend of Señor Menendez had told them—would not know us. It meant that Colin, who would have been a rich man, was very poor. It made no difference. He was splendid. And I was so happy it was all like a dream. He made me forget I was to blame for his troubles. Then we were in Washington—and I saw Señor Menendez in the hotel!
“Oh, my heart stopped beating. For me it seemed like the end of everything. I knew, I knew, he was following me. But he had not seen me, and without telling Colin the reason, I made him leave Washington, He was glad to go. Wherever we went, in America, they seemed to find out about my mother. I got to hate them, hate them all. We came to England, and Colin heard about this house, and we took it.
“At last we were really happy. No one knew us. Because we were strange, and because of Ah Tsong, they looked at us very funny and kept away, but we did not care. Then Sir James Appleton sold Cray’s Folly.”
She looked up quickly.
“How can I tell you? It must have been by Ah Tsong that he traced me to Surrey. Some spy had told him there was a Chinaman living here. Oh, I don’t know how he found out, but when I heard who was coming to Cray’s Folly I thought I should die.