He caught Enfield’s eye.
“No, it wasn’t quite safe for her to run on so with me. She’s either very innocent, or very artful, or very reckless, I don’t know which. If she is good, she’s very, very good.”
He laughed, but Lawrence smoked soberly and silent.
“Young Harlow, the ensign, was her last capture, wasn’t he?”
Enfield nodded, gravely.
“They say he was over his head, and would have given up the navy and flouted his people and everything, if she would have taken him, but she wouldn’t let him sacrifice himself. That was a strange affair of theirs—being lost on a sleigh-ride and snowed up two days across the mountain. I never could understand it; both of them knew the country, and none of the rest of the party found much trouble.”
“I don’t know,” Enfield answered, slowly. “I wasn’t taking as much interest in her movements just then as I had been. I cut adrift about the time she took Harlow in tow; I suppose she thought I was jealous, and perhaps I was. I don’t know how they managed it, but he left very suddenly, and she was sick about that time.”
All these things, and many more, surged through Enfield’s mind now, as he stood before her and was swayed by her unrestrained upbraiding. She said that he had stood in her way, that she had put her trust in him and given him such a near place that others had been kept from her. He found that hard to swallow. He turned from her and threw himself into an arm-chair, with his face away from her, and chewed the bitter accusation.
Finally she came slowly and stood beside him a minute or two, then said sadly, laying her hand on his arm: