CHAPTER LI

Danielle’s Secret

We had come to the stream, and to the shade of the aspen trees. I sat down on one of the rocks, above the first fishing hole, and unfolded the papers she had given to me, and read:

“Salutations! Do you remember, my dear and gay Gaby, after the V. affair, when you visited me in the hospital, that you said, with your imitated Mona Lisa smile, ‘Sorry, old dear, I made a trifling mistake, did I not?’ The incident has probably passed from your memory. It has not passed from mine, because I did not believe then, and I do not believe now, that you intended to fire that shot at V. instead of at me. You proved your innocence, however, like the expert you are; so, ‘let the dead past—’ et cetera. Particularly since I did not die, but have lived to make, also, a trifling mistake.

“I find that I was in error concerning the train robbery. After due reflection, I have remembered that, reading of the details in the Denver papers, your respected father and I merely regretted that we had not had the forethought, and the cleverness, to have pulled the affair ourselves. Since this is the case, we could not have hidden the money, as I seem to recall telling you that we did, on the Desert Moon Ranch. It was a pretty dream of ours—that was all.

“Shall I explain? Do you remember the sweet cocotte with the colored sash at Cannes? Very young, very exquisite, and almost very innocent? She watched us, from her table, out of the violet corners of her long, long eyes. When we left the place, you and I, my gloves were missing and I returned for them. You were duped, my dear, were you not?

“She is not as lovely, not as gay as you were at eighteen. But you are no longer eighteen. And you have grown exacting, and a bit vicious (recalling, again, the V. affair), and a bit selfish, too. (I knew that you collected the final five hundred pounds from Baron T.)

“These, and all things considered, I seem to myself to have acted rather nobly, rather compassionately. I spared you the heartache of witnessing your supplantation. Ours was a tender leave taking, was it not? I paid the expenses of a long and costly journey for you and the gentle Danielle. (Gad, Gaby, I’d have paid twice as much to be rid of you for half the time!) I sent you to fond relatives. I provided you with an interesting and romantic occupation—treasure hunting. I gave the righteous Danielle the opportunity for which she was pining; the opportunity to try her hand at turning you into ‘an honest woman.’

“Tell her, by the way, that her lover, or as she virtuously insisted, her husband is still with me, and that he is behaving himself admirably. I suspect that my Lili is a bit over fond of him; but I have warned her that one who has had the chaste affections of the little nun would be unlikely to succumb to her ardencies.

“Lili now inquires to whom am I writing. She is eighteen; she has seen you; so I dare tell her, to you, in a far country with an amusing name—Nevada.

“She mispronounces it, deliciously. She blows it, and you, charmingly away from the tips of her tiny pink fingers. She kisses my ears. She tells me that she owns me. So, I suppose, I should not sign myself, as of old, Yours, with an ever increasing devotion, Bimbi.”

“Good lands alive!” I said. My stomach hurt me, and my head ached.

“I am sorry for young Mr. Stanley,” Miss MacDonald said. “But, you see, I was right in thinking that Miss Canneziano’s life might hold a secret.”

“No! No!” Danny stood there in front of us, holding to an aspen tree for support.

“I wondered whether you were coming out from behind the tree,” Miss MacDonald said.

“I saw you looking at me. You are cruel. You are very cruel.”

For a minute all I could be was sorry for Danny. I got up and went to her and put an arm around her.

She tucked her head down on my breast. She was so small that I could look right over it, at Miss MacDonald, sitting there, undisturbed and triumphant. She was in the right, and was a good girl; so it was queer that the sight of her made my heart go straight out to the wrong, bad, little Danny, with her brown head underneath my chin.

“Danny, honey,” I said, “are you planning a divorce, after you’ve had your six months in Nevada? Was he cruel to you? Unfaithful?”

“No, no,” she said. “Nothing like that, nothing at all. I can explain every word of it. But will anyone believe me?”

“You just try it,” I urged. “I’m all set for believing you, right here and now. Come over here, and rest, and tell us all about it.”

I led her across to the rock where I had been sitting, and made a place for her beside me.