The Highgrader Part 17

"Hardly. I don't think he's quite her style of man."

"Perhaps with his cousin, the highwayman."

"Good heavens, no!"

She took on a look of horrified suspicion. "You don't think--surely it couldn't be--Oh, I do hope it isn't Lord Farquhar."

He stared at her through his monocle with his mouth open, then discovered that he had been sold as the laughter rippled into her face.

"Oh, I say! Jolly good one, that. Lord Farquhar, by Jove!" Yet his laughter rang flat. It always made him angry to find that they were "spoofing" him. He didn't like to be "got" in the beastly traps these girls were always laying for him.

"There's Moya now--and there's a man with her," Joyce announced.

"By Gad, it's the highwayman!" Verinder gasped.

It was, though strictly speaking Jack Kilmeny was not yet with her, since she was still unaware of his presence. Moya was sitting on a mossy rock with a magazine in her hand, but she was not reading. By the look of her she was daydreaming, perhaps of the man who was moving noiselessly toward her over the bowlders.

Before she heard him he was close upon her. She looked around, and with a little cry got to her feet and stared at him, her hand on her fast beating heart.

Joyce waited to see no more.

"No business of ours," she announced to Verinder, and, without regard to his curiosity or her own, turned heel and marshaled him from the field.

"You!" Moya cried.

Kilmeny bowed. "The bad penny turned up again, Miss Dwight."

Scorn of him flashed in her dark eyes. She stood straight and rigid, but in spite of herself she breathed fast.

"You've forgotten your promise. You've lost faith again," he charged.

His impudence stirred contemptuous anger. "I know you now, sir," she told him with fine contempt.

"And you promised to believe in me." He said it quietly, with just a touch of bitterness in the reproach of his wistful voice.

The first hint of startled doubt came into her eyes. It was as if he had breathed into a marble statue the pulse of life. He had known her vivid as a thrush in song, a dainty creature of fire and dew. She stood now poised as it were on the edge of hope.

"How could I believe when I found your guilt on you? What right have you to ask it?"

"So you found the paper in the hat, did you?"

"Yes."

"Certain about my guilt this time, are you?"

He said it almost with a sneer, but nothing could crush the resurgent glow in her heart. Against the perilous and emotional climax which was growing on her she set her will in vain. Why was it that the mere presence of this man called to her so potently and shook her confidence in his guilt?

"We found the money," she explained, thinking to confound him.

"I guessed that. It was gone when I went to look for it this morning.

I've come for it now."

His a.s.surance amazed her. "Come for it!" she repeated. "It isn't here."

"No, I didn't expect to find it in your purse. But it is at the Lodge."

"No."

"Where, then?"

"I shan't tell you. The money will be returned to those from whom it was stolen."

He looked at her with hard, narrowed eyes. "It will be returned, will it? When?"

"To-day. Within a few hours."

"Who is going to return it?"

Moya had it on the tip of her tongue to tell, but pulled up in time. "I think we'll not go into that."

The American looked at his watch. The hands showed the hour to be 2:30.

If the money was to be returned that day someone must already be on the way with it. He had seen his cousin, Captain Kilmeny, take the Gunnison road in a trap not half an hour earlier.

"So the captain is taking it back to-day?" he mused aloud, wary eyes on Moya's face.

A startled expression leaped to her countenance. She had told more than she had intended. "I didn't say so."

"I say so."

Beneath his steady gaze her lashes fell. He nodded, sure that he had guessed correctly.

"I intended to have a talk with you and straighten out some things," he went on. "But I find I haven't time now. We'll postpone it till to-morrow. I'll meet you here at ten o'clock in the morning."

"No," she told him.

The wave of hope had ebbed in her. Given the opportunity to explain the evidence against him, he had cared more to find out what they were doing with the stolen money. He had no time to save his good name.

"Ten in the morning. Remember. It's important. I want to see you alone.

If I'm not on time wait for me."

That was his last word. He bowed, turned away almost at a run, and was lost in the small willows. Presently she heard the sound of a galloping horse. A minute later she caught a glimpse of it disappearing up Red Rock canon. He was following the cutoff trail that led to Gunnison.

She wondered what was taking him away so abruptly. He had meant to stop, then had changed his mind. He had told her calmly she must meet him here to-morrow, and if he were late for the appointment she must wait. His impudence was enough to stagger belief. She would show him about that.

If he wanted to see her he must come to the Lodge and face Lady Jim.

Even then she would not see him. Why should she, since he was what he was?

Ah, but that was the crux of the whole matter! To look at him was to feel that whatever his faults they were not despicable ones. He was alive, so very much alive, and the look of him was that which an honest man should have. Had he proved his innocence and been released? Or had he broken prison, an alternative of which he was quite capable? And, guilty or innocent, what could be the explanation of his extraordinary demand that she should turn over to him the stolen money?