Two words only, but they rang a knell in his ears. They gripped him in the moment of his swagger, left him bare before her, a culprit, dumb.
“He has felt it terribly! Terribly,” she continued. “He was blind, and you deceived him. Whom can he trust now, Arthur?”
He strove to rally his confidence. He could not meet her gaze, but he tapped a rail of the stile with his stick. “Oh, but that’s nonsense!” he said. “Nonsense! But, of course, if you are against me, if you are not going to help me——”
“How can I help you? He will not hear your name.”
“I can tell you how—quite easily, if you will let me explain?”
She shook her head.
“But you can. If you are willing, that is. Of course, if you are not——”
“What can I do? He knows all.”
“You can remind him of what I did for him,” he answered eagerly. “I saved his life. He would not be alive now but for me. You can tell him that. Remind him of that, Jos. Tell him that sometime after dinner, when he is in a good humor. He owes his life to me, and that’s not a small thing—is it? Even he must see that he owes me something. What’s a paltry thousand or two thousand? And I only borrowed them; he won’t lose a penny by it—not a penny!” earnestly. “What’s that in return for a man’s life? He must know——”
“He does know!” she cried; and the honest indignation in her eyes, the indignation that she could no longer restrain, scorched him. For this was too much, this was more than even she, gentle as she was, could bear. “He does know all—all, Arthur!” she repeated severely. “That it was not you—not you, but Clement, Mr. Ovington, who saved him! And fought for him—that night! Oh, Arthur, for shame! For shame! I did not think so meanly of you as this! I did not think that you would rob another——”