“I wonder what she’s doing here?”
“Ah, that’s the mystery!” I said, watching her gathering the old-fashioned flowers into a great posy.
“You’ll need to have a chat with her, doctor. If she likes she can tell us a lot, that’s certain.”
“But she won’t,” was my response.
“She may, now that the rascals have made away with the man she loves.”
“But don’t you recollect what Reilly overheard?” I said. “It seems that, in obedience to the orders of the gang, she deceived him and enticed him, so that he fell into their hands. By that they managed to make her an accessory in the crime, and so ensure her secrecy.”
“That’s a bit of Black Bennett’s cunning ingenuity. He’s always artful enough to fix the blame on other people, which accounts for his hair-breadth escapes from the police.”
The girl, having gathered sufficient flowers, halted and, leaning her arms upon a small gate, looked wistfully away across the fields. I was near enough to see how wan and pale was her face, and how haggard and worn she seemed. A great change had been wrought in her since our first meeting in that dingy little consulting-room at Walworth.
She had been my friend then. Was she still? I had never ceased to think of her even in the wild excitement of that search after fortune. That pale, beautiful face was ever before me. Those dark, wistful eyes, that told of a dread secret hidden within her heart, seemed everywhere to gaze into mine, just as they had gazed on the last occasion we had met.
I confess to you, my reader, that I loved her—yet she was unapproachable.