“She thought it was Mr. Stoughton Page who brought you to the club. She never knew, until we were leaving, that you did not know who I was. Oh, it was all my fault, all my fault, I tell you!” I finished, as she regarded me in silence. “I let you think everything you did—I never tried to help you out, after the first, because I couldn’t. I loved you, Margery.”
“You took a strange way to prove it,” she returned.
Her head was thrown back, her gloved hands pressed together. “Oh! oh! I hate you! It was contemptible! To take advantage of my trust! To lie to me! How could you do it?”
I turned away miserable, bitter with myself. And all the while I worked on the valve, stretching the spring so it would do its work and replacing the part, she said nothing. Even when I had started the engine and found it to work smoothly and climbed back in the car, she was silent. But she drew away from me with a movement which was unmistakable.
The east had begun to lighten long since, and there was a white streak along the horizon, streaked with the clearest of amber and rose, as we came to a crossroad, a mile on, and I got a glimpse of a signpost. If its information was correct, I had made the turns in the road aright, and we were within half a mile of our destination. A minute later we topped a slope, and I marked down a large, stone house which answered the description I had from the club stableman. It was approached by a driveway bordered with trees and shrubbery.
I brought the car to a stop at the gates. “I believe this is Mr. Page’s place,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. It was the first word she had spoken since she knew who I was.
“And before we go in,” I went on, “I thought you might wish to tell me who I am to be.”
“I have nothing to do with that,” she answered. “Please take me to the house.”
“But,” I insisted, “they will probably ask questions. If they do not, they will wonder. And I can hardly be a stranger to you—under the circumstances.”