He turned and looked her straight in the face, his expression very serious.
“No. There is nothing, I admit. Nothing! And yet a great secret lies here. Here, this spot, remote from anywhere, was the scene of a mysterious tragedy. You hold one clue, Elma—and I the other.” And again he looked straight into her eyes, while standing on that very spot where the fair-haired girl had breathed her last in his arms, and then, after a few seconds’ silence, he went on: “Elma! I—I call you by your Christian name because I feel that you have my future at heart, and—and I, on my part—I love you! May I call you by your Christian name?”
She returned his look very gravely. Her fine eyes met his, but he never wavered. Since that first day when Tweedles, her little black Pomeranian, had snapped at him she had been ever in his thoughts. He could not disguise the fact. Yet, after all, it was a very foolish dream, he had told himself dozens of times. He was poor—very poor—a mere adventurer on life’s troublous waters—while she was the daughter of a millionaire with, perhaps, a peeress’ career before her.
“Roddy,” at last she spoke, “I call you that! I think of you as Roddy,” she said slowly, looking straight into his eyes. “But in this matter we are very serious—both of us—eh?”
“Certainly we are, Elma,” he replied, taking her hand passionately.
She withdrew it at once, saying:
“You have brought me here for a purpose—to find traces of—of the girl who died at this spot. Where are the traces?”
“Well, the bracken is trodden down, as you see,” he replied.
“But surely that is no evidence of what you allege?”
“No, Elma. But that photograph which you showed me last night is a picture of her.”