“Well,” I said at length, when we had halted a second time to turn back and admire the view, “you are displeased with me, Edith? Why am I so unwelcome?”
“You are not unwelcome,” she declared quickly. “I am certainly not displeased.”
“I begin to think that during the months you’ve been here you have forgotten those words you uttered to me in Paris, just as you forgot your vow made to me beneath the willows at Ryburgh.”
“I have forgotten nothing,” she protested. “This is cruel of you, Gerald, to reproach me thus.”
“You told me then that you reciprocated my affection, yet you allow this man Bertini to follow you everywhere. He is here.”
“Here?” she gasped in alarm, her face pale in an instant. “Are you certain?”
“I have seen and spoken with him this morning.”
I did not tell her the nature of our conversation, or how I had given him twelve hours in which to decide whether he preferred to reveal the truth or take the consequences of arrest; neither did I tell her that I had called at the police-office and that the spy was already under close observation, the police believing him to be an undesirable visitor from Monte Carlo.
“You’ve spoken with him? What did he tell you?”
“Very little of consequence. I know that you are his victim, and I am seeking to release you from the thraldom,” I answered gravely.