She gave a smile of sweet protest. “That is hardly my judgment of you. It does not follow because Geoffrey Herriard is, happily, not the intellectual equal of Paul Gastineau he is not a clever man.”
“At least,” he said, allowing himself one favourable word, “my conduct of your case was all my own.”
“I gathered that,” she replied, “from your story, and was glad to think it.”
“If,” he continued, with a touch of bitterness, “it had been he who, through my mouth, had won the day for you, I don’t think I could ever have brought myself to ask you to be my wife. But at least I was honest there.”
“And clever, and brave, and chivalrous. And you thought, Geoffrey, that the woman who professed to love you would have repaid all that by rejecting you because she found you were enmeshed in the toils of our common enemy? You might have known me better, dear.”
Presently Herriard said, “I have at least one great piece of good news for you. The man who killed Martindale has been discovered.”
“Geoffrey!” Alexia’s face flushed with the joy of that relief. “Tell me; who——”
“Who but the one man in our thoughts, the man whose evil personality hangs like a thunder-cloud over our lives.”
“Not Gastineau?”
“Yes; Paul Gastineau.” Then he told her of Quickjohn’s discovery, and of Gastineau’s visit and attack; softening, however, the details of that terrible struggle, in order to spare her anxiety and fear for the future. As it was, she showed signs of a distress and a terror too strong to be kept under.