Part 3

"You do mind giving faith and sympathy!" Beverley burst out. "Why should you take me on faith, and refuse it to another? You knew nothing about me ... I know nothing about this child...."

"Ah, you're sure you know nothing about her!" His tone was bitter.

"What could I know?" she echoed. "I brought her straight home, and she hasn't been able to talk ... except a few words."

"It occurred to me as rather odd you should do so much for a complete stranger."

"Oh, I see! You think I knew her ... before?"

"I thought it possible. Her name put the idea into my head. I heard you say it once ... in your ... sleep ... Riley ... or something like that."

For the third time Beverley blushed, one of her fatal, agonized blushes. The rush of blood forced tears to her eyes; and a certain strained look in them, a quivering of the lips, brought back to Roger's mind a picture of her in the train. That was the first time he had seen her blush. She had said--he remembered well--"You are the only man I'm interested in," and had blushed furiously. He had been sure then that she was no adventuress. She had looked like a frightened child, and she looked like one now. With that picture of the girl in the train came back another recollection. She had asked if any man had inquired for her, or if any "noticeable" person had sought his acquaintance. He had replied that he'd not spoken with a soul except a man he knew slightly, a Congressman from California named O'Reilly. He supposed that O'Reilly didn't interest her? Upon this, with a desperate blush, she had made her startlingly frank reply.

As this came back, Roger's heart was no longer soft. What a fool he had been, that day in the train, not to connect the girl's change of colour with his mention of O'Reilly! She might have blurted out her compliment to excuse the blush, instead of the blush having followed the compliment. Good heavens! could Justin O'Reilly have been the man from whom she wished to hide?

"Perhaps the name you spoke in your sleep was O'Reilly!" he flung at his wife.

Beverley gathered herself together.

"So all this time," she said, "you have been suspicious of me! And I was so happy. I thought you were happy, too, but it's just as I was afraid it would be, if I married you. You can't endure the strain!"

"I have endured the strain," Roger defended himself; "because I loved you as few men have ever loved, but the question is, have you deserved it all?"

"This is the moment I felt must come!" she said. "If I had only myself to think of, don't you know I'd have told you everything? I warned you how it would be ... how I should have to keep the secret not for a little while, but for always! If you don't believe, if you think I lied when I said no man had ever been anything to me ... if you think I lie now, when I say I never saw or heard of this girl till I found her in the street.... I can go out of your life.... I can go to-day!"

As she spoke slowly, sentence by sentence, with a sobbing breath between, Beverley looked straight into her husband's eyes. Hers did not falter though they swam in tears. With her last words, she rose and stood facing him as he sat at his desk.

Roger gave her back gaze for gaze, as if he would read her secret written in cypher on her soul. He saw that she meant what she said. A word from him, and their experiment was at an end. She would go. It seemed to him that never had her beauty been so gentle, so womanly.

"You shan't go!" he cried, springing to his feet. "I can't give you up!"

But she held him off.

"No!" she panted. "I won't stay if you want me only in that way--because you have a kind of love for me, whether you believe in me or not. I love you too much to be shamed by you! Either you trust me, or you don't. Say which it is, and I'll stay, or go."

"I've got to trust you! I do!" The words seemed to burst from him. "You know I love you more than all the world. It would kill me to lose you."

"I'd rather die from the shock of losing you, Roger, than from such a hateful pain, going on and on----"

"It shan't go on," he said. "I've been happy, too. I'm a changed man since the hour I saw you and loved you. It's only to-day I've been wretched. Forgive me, Bev--and God forgive you if----"

"There's an 'if' for you?"

"No--no, there's no 'if' any more. You're to forgive me----that's all!"

"Oh, I do! The hard thing would be not to forgive. But--can we go on being happy again, just as if nothing had happened?"

"Of course we can, silly child. Nothing has happened." Roger had her in his arms now. He kissed her over and over again, till she gasped for breath. "This has only cleared the air. As for that beastly child, I don't care if she's a murderess. Keep her forever, if you choose. Train her as your maid----"

"But she's not 'beastly!' And she's not the kind to have for a maid. I think she's a lady. She seems----"

"Well, do whatever you like with her. Can I go further, to show you I want to atone?"

"No, you can't, Roger----" Beverley nestled her face into his neck. "I adore you!"

She closed her eyes, but opening them she happened, looking over Roger's shoulder, to see John Heron's letter on her husband's desk. A faint shiver ran through her body, and Roger felt it.

"What's the matter, my darling?" he asked.

"Nothing!" she answered. "A mouse ran over my grave."

V

ON THE WAY TO THE CAR

Beverley found that she could "be happy again, as if nothing had happened" between her and Roger. For one thing, it was wonderful to feel that she had the power to "save" a fellow-being, and wonderful to be worshipped as Clo worshipped her. Of course, Roger "worshipped" her, too, but it was Beverley who looked up to him. Clo looked up to her. When Beverley went into the room presided over by Sister Lake, the child's great black eyes dwelt upon her as the eyes of a devotee upon the form of a goddess "come alive." Roger Sands' wife felt simply that she was repaying God for saving her, by what she was able to do for this Irish girl.

As soon as Clo was allowed to talk she insisted upon telling Beverley about herself. There was, apparently, no romance or mystery in the story of her eighteen years of life. Her mother had died when she was less than three, but Clo could "remember her perfectly." It wasn't only the photograph she had (a badly taken one of a young woman with a baby in her arms), but she could see her mother's colouring. Oh, such lovely colouring! Not dark red hair, like her own, but gold, and eyes more brown than gray. And mother had been only twenty-four when she died. Clo had to admit that most of what she knew of mother was from the Sisters who looked after the orphans. Yes, it was in an orphan asylum that the child had been brought up. About father she knew nothing, except that mother had "lost" him before her baby was born, and that he "came from America." Evidently his name had been Riley, because mother was Mrs. Riley, and Clo was Clodagh because "that was a name in mother's family."

The Sisters had been particularly kind. Mother had given Clo into their care, because she lodged, and had fallen ill, in the street of the orphan asylum. There had been a little money, which was placed in a bank for the child. The Sisters had known that mother was a lady; but the orphan girls, when they grew up, were supposed to be put into service. Neither Clo nor the Sisters had wanted her to be a servant, and when she was sixteen a situation was found for her as "companion" to an old lady. Clo "stuck it out" for nearly two years. Then she ran away and sailed for the United States, her unknown father's land, with the sixty pounds which was her fortune. This money was all spent, and she was nearly starving when she snatched at what she could get with Moreton and Payntor.

"But I just couldn't eat and dress on my wages," Clo explained, in her soft, rich voice, rather deep for so young and small a girl, and made creamy by a touch of Irish brogue. "One has to do both in New York. I was so hungry all the time, if the girls left a crust on their plates I used to hide it. I expect the way I'd look to see if there'd be anything left gave them the idea I was a sly piece. They thought I put on airs, too. Me! P'raps it was my not knowing their kind of slang. And it's true I did steal once, or almost the same thing as steal. There was a dollar bill on the floor under a table one afternoon. 'Stead of trying to find who was the owner, I slipped it inside my dress. I must have been nearly off my head, or I'd never have done it, darling Mrs. Sands! When the time came to go home to my room that night, I didn't go. I went to a restaurant, and I ate. I ate a whole dollar's worth of dinner, just so I couldn't give any money back if I changed my mind next day. Well, next day was the day you know of. And what with knowing I was a thief, and the girls knowing it, too--though there was no proof--I thought the best thing for a lost child was to die!"

Beverley had by this time "made everything right" for Clo at Moreton and Payntor's. Indeed, Mrs. Roger Sands having taken her up, she had become quite a classic figure of romance among her late enemies. When Beverley told the girl that when she got well she wouldn't have to go, but could stop and be "a sort of secretary," Clo Riley almost had a relapse from the shock of joy.

By the end of May Clo's broken ribs had mended. The first day when she was up and dressed, able to go downstairs, and out for a spin in the renovated blue car, she was a very different looking girl from the battered wisp of humanity whose blood had stained the "robin's-egg" cloth and silk.

It was Sunday, and Clo was burning with excitement. She was to meet her Angel's husband for the first time. She had pictured him a dragon. The Angel loved him, but the Angel was such a saint, and would love any old husband. Clo imagined that Beverley had been poor (she must have known poverty to be so sympathetic!) and that she'd married an elderly man because--well, not entirely because he was rich (that wouldn't be like an Angel) but because she needed protection. Clo expected to see a grumpy graybeard.

Roger expected to see a washed-out invalid of indefinite type, a young woman of the shabbiest shop-girl order.

What Clodagh saw, when she followed Mrs. Sands into the study, was a strong, dark man, not old at all, apparently, and almost interesting enough in looks to be worthy of the Angel. Still, she was not sure she was going to like him.

What Roger saw was a small, slender girl, too childish, too impish, to think of as a "young woman." She had a little oval face with a pointed chin. It was pale, but not washed-out, and her lips were red. An obstinate, impudent mouth, Roger thought. As for her eyes--he had never seen such great eyes in a human face. They were like holes in a blanket, so big, so black, as they stared up at him. She had curly auburn hair, that looked even redder than it was, in contrast with her eyes. But though the face was impish, not pretty precisely, with its high cheek bones and impertinent chin, he had to admit that it was noticeable, and, in some odd way, attractive. The girl was charmingly dressed. He might have known that Bev would see to that. Clo was a surprise to him, as he was to her. Each saw that the other was a distinct and interesting personality; and Roger realized that Beverley was right; the girl had the air of being a lady. There was something else about her, too, which piqued him. He could not make out what it was. Did she look like someone he knew?

He was polite, as he had promised to be, and called Clo "Miss Riley." When Beverley said that they were going out for the invalid's first drive, Roger replied that he was glad; but Clo, catching his eye, fancied she saw a sarcastic gleam.

"He's thinking of the time I came here in that same car," she told herself. "I know I must have spoilt it--got it all messed up with blood. Probably he had to give a lot for doing it over. And my goodness, the dollars of his that Angel has been pouring out for me every day since! No wonder he looks sick! But some day I shall pay. I don't know how, only I shall--I shall!"

Beverley and Clo went down in the gorgeously decorated elevator.

"If Angel lived in a garret, it would be a palace to me," she reflected.

A hall porter opened the door of carved bronze over glass. Without seeming to look, he took in every detail of the slim figure in white cloth; the small white hat tilted over the dark red hair, the tiny white shoes, the dainty ankles in silk stockings. Clo could have laughed aloud. Of course, the giant in livery knew the whole story. He was contrasting the way she came out with the way she had come in.

Drawn up at the pavement was the glittering blue automobile, with the statuesque Robbins at the wheel. Clo remembered both, with a queer, sick pang. She had not been wholly unconscious when the stretcher was pushed into the car. "What I owe this darling woman!" was the thought she breathed like a prayer.

As the two crossed the pavement--tall, beautiful Beverley and quaint little Clo--a man who must have been loitering close by started toward them with a limping step, and took off his hat.

"Is this Mrs. Roger Sands?" he asked.

Beverley stopped short, within a yard of her car. For such a graceful, softly moving person, her movement seemed jerky. Clo glanced from the man to Mrs. Sands in surprise. One would say the Angel looked frightened, only that would be absurd! Besides, the man wasn't a creature worth being afraid of. He was short, and very thin, as if he had been ill. He hadn't a nice face. Sallow and sickly it was, like a prison bird, with hollows under the red-rimmed eyes. He was badly lame, too, if he wasn't pretending; and altogether, in spite of her newly mended ribs, Clo felt that she herself would be equal to knocking him down.

"Yes, I am Mrs. Sands," Beverley answered, as if against her will. "I don't--but perhaps someone has sent you with a message?"

"In a way, yes, that's it," said the man. "I had a message for you. I'm the man sent to meet you in Chicago, September 21st of last year."

VI

THE PARCEL WITH THE GOLD SEALS

There was a second of suspense for Clo, and then Beverley spoke quietly:

"Oh, I see! That's very interesting," she said. "I hope--the news is good?"

"It's a long message," the man answered. "I was told to let you have it in person. I thought you'd be goin' out sooner or later. If your husban' 'ad bin along, I'd have left a line, but----"

"Never mind what you would have done, please," Beverley cut him short. "The best thing I can think of now, is this" (she hurried on in a low tone, and Clo who had stepped aside, nearer to the car, did not catch the words), "Take a taxi, and follow my automobile. We're going into the Park. When you see us stop, you must stop too, at a distance.

"I shall get out and let the motor, with my friend in it, go on without me for a while. Then we can talk. Do you understand?"

"I'll be there," said the man.

He touched his hat and moved away, as if his errand were done.

"Drive slowly through the Park," Beverley instructed Robbins, and gently made Clo get into the car before her. "I'm so sorry to have kept you standing, dear," she said. "I hope you don't feel weak or 'tottery'?"

Clo did feel very weak, not from fatigue, but from excitement. She replied that she felt "grand." And Mrs. Sands forgot to say that she was glad.

The girl glanced at the older woman, and saw that she was staring straight ahead, with a withdrawn look in her eyes, which told that she saw nothing. Clo's heart beat fast. This drive was to have been a glorious experience. She had seen Central Park more than once, and had walked there, miserable in her loneliness. Now, though she looked out of the window, it was to let Beverley feel that she was not being stared at. The girl saw only a blur of colour, as if a kaleidoscope turned before her eyes.

At last Beverley spoke.

"Dear child," she said, "I'm sure you understand that the man who was waiting for me brought a message I'm anxious to hear. And--I'm sure of another thing--that I can trust you!"

"I'd die any minute for you, sure I would!" she cried.

"I believe you would! But I don't want you to die. All I want is for you to listen while I explain----"

"As if you needed to explain to me!" the girl broke out.

"I don't need to, perhaps, yet I wish to say just this: I love Roger dearly. I've told you so often enough! I'd give anything on earth not to have a secret from him. But to save a life--not my own--there is a secret I must keep. This man and his message are part of it. Now, that's all I'm going to explain, except that--that nothing must be said."

"I'd bite my tongue out sooner!" Clo protested.

"Thank you, dear! Now we've had this talk, it's a comfort, not a worry, having you with me. You won't mind if I send you on while I get down and walk in the Park?"

"I'd love it!" said Clo.

At once Beverley took the speaking tube and ordered the chauffeur to stop. He drew up at the side of the road. They were in the midst of the Park now, an exquisite green and gold world of peace and beauty.

"I feel like taking a little exercise," Beverley said to Robbins, as she stepped out of the car. "Miss Riley isn't strong enough to walk. Go as far along Riverside Drive as Grant's Tomb, and then come back, but slowly, so she can see everything. You'll find me waiting here."

It seemed that Robbins carried out his instructions too laboriously. Clo didn't like the ferret-man, and she didn't believe that Beverley liked meeting him.

When at last Robbins brought the car back to the rendezvous there was the tall graceful figure in gray, standing alone.

"Oh, have we kept you?" the girl cried, throwing open the door before the automobile stopped.

Beverley did not answer, or seem to hear. She did not even look at Clo.

"Home!" she said to Robbins. "As fast as you can!"

Clo was shocked into silence, and hardly breathed when Beverley had sunk on to the seat, covering her face with her hands. The car had nearly reached the Sands' corner of Park Avenue before the elder girl spoke. Then she said abruptly, as if waking from a dream:

"Forgive me! I couldn't talk! I'm in dreadful trouble! I must ask you to help me. Are you strong enough to take a longer drive, and to walk a few steps alone?"

"Rather!" said Clo.

"Well, when we stop in front of our house, sit still in the car. I don't want Sister Lake or Roger to know we're back. I'll run in, get a parcel which must be taken to a certain place, and give it to you. Then Robbins will drive (I'll tell him) to a hotel on Broadway, called the Westmorland. I never heard of it before, but it seems that it's near 33d Street, and quiet and respectable. Go into the restaurant and order tea. While you're there, that man you saw will come into the room, and you'll hand him the packet. That's all."

"It sounds too easy," Clo said.

"I hope it will be easy. I'll bring you a latch-key when I come down with the parcel. Let yourself in when you get home, and go straight to your room. I don't want you to fib, but try to make it seem to Sister as if we'd just come back. She'll think it strange if she knows I've sent you out on an errand by yourself."

"She shan't know," the girl promised.

"You _are_ a comfort! You see, I told Roger I'd be at home by four, and I couldn't be, till long after if I took the parcel myself. I shall only just be in time as it is. Here we are at the door! Now I'll rush. In five minutes I hope to be with you again. Oh, if only Sister Lake isn't at the window!"

The five minutes passed, and Beverley didn't return. Clo watched the silver-gilt clock under the vase of violets. Ten minutes; fifteen minutes; no Mrs. Sands! The girl was wondering whether she ought to wait indefinitely, or seek her friend to see what had happened when Beverley appeared. She was breathless with haste.

"Here, take this, and do just as I told you to do," she said, thrusting into Clo's hands a bag, not a parcel. "Inside you'll find what I spoke of, and money to pay for your tea. I had to hide the parcel. I can't stop to explain more now." She turned to the chauffeur, and hastily ordered him to drive to the Westmorland Hotel. Miss Riley had to meet a friend there; Robbins must wait till she was ready to come home.

Only as the car slowed down in front of the third-rate hotel did Clo touch the hasp of the gray suede bag. It was not locked, and save for a crumpled dollar bill, its sole contents was a large, unaddressed envelope fastened with three gold seals. On each of these seals was the same elaborate monogram, which Clo did not try to make out; but it was not composed of Beverley Sands' initials. Evidently the parcel had been crammed into the first handy receptacle, for it was all but too big to go in, and Clo found it difficult to extract without damaging the seals. Leaving the bag on the seat, she hid the envelope under the smart, white cloth cape which went with her new frock.