Again Mary ignored his remark, smiling faintly through the dusk as she watched his obvious floundering. "No, a deed like that is too rare and fine for the author of it to keep hidden. Oh, if you could have been there with me this morning and seen that poor mother's face and her son's as they told about how the money came, you would have felt like crying for joy. I did. I couldn't help it. I broke down. I think I know now what heaven is like. It is like I felt at that moment. They were like two happy children, and I was happy, too, and grateful." Here Mary actually sobbed. "I was grateful to some unknown person who had saved me from—from the most humiliating thing that ever threatened me. I was willing to give my life rather than accept that aid from Albert Frazier, and it had come in that mysterious way like a gift from God at the very last moment. You must help me—help me find out who did it, Mr. Brown. Will you?"
He stared like a man in a bewildered dream. "Yes, yes," he stammered, "I will, but why bother about it now, anyway?"
"'Bother about it'! How can you use such words? You see, you are not in my place. You can't realize how I feel. I want to see him. I want to look into his face, as—as I am looking into yours now, and tell him just how I feel and what he has done for me. I want to repay him. I want to tell him that there is nothing—nothing under high heaven I would not do for him. I want him to tell me what to do in all this darkness that has gathered about me and is stifling hope and life out of me, young as I am. I want to be his faithful friend till the end of time. I want to serve him—to be his slave—anything."
Charles rose to his feet awkwardly. "I—I see how you feel, Miss Rowland," he said. "But I am afraid I am keeping you from your duties. By the way, your father has gone over to Dodd's. He came by the field and asked me to tell you that he would not be back till about bedtime."
Mary got up also. She reached out and took his arm and walked with him to the other end of the veranda. He felt her hand trembling. She pressed his arm against her side. "You shall not go yet!" she cried, passionately. "I have been beating about the bush. I know that you did that thing. I've known it all day. No one else knows, but I do—and it has made me so happy. I could not have taken it from any one else, but I want to take it from you. I want to take it, because I know you wanted to give it. I know how you feel about me, and I want you to know how I feel about you."
Had the heavens split above him, dropping flames of celestial fire, he could not have felt more ecstatic. She had suddenly paused and lifted her wondrous face to his. Her beautiful lips hung quivering like drooping flowers. He was a man of remarkable restraint, but sometimes acted under impulse. He took her face between his hands, he bent to kiss her unresisting lips; then suddenly he checked himself. A picture of his whole past flashed before him. He was a man with a price on his head and liable to exposure at any moment. What right had he to the heart of such a girl as this—to win it under her father's kindly roof through the agency of a just act to a suffering man. He dropped his hands. With his face full of deepening agony he simply looked at her fixedly and remained mute.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "You are troubled about something; I see it. I've known it a long time."
"Miss Rowland—" he began.
"Miss Rowland!" she cried, impatiently. "Charlie—don't you see I call you Charlie! I have called you that a hundred times to myself since finding out what you did. I used it when I prayed to you—actually prayed to you this afternoon to forgive me for allowing that man to kiss me on the way home."
"To kiss you!" She saw him start and stand quivering under her earnest upward stare. She saw him lower his head as a slave being scourged with thongs of steel—a slave who was determined to show no signs of suffering. "He kissed you! Then—then—my God! you are engaged to him! After all, you are engaged to him!"