DETECTIVE CALEB SWEETWATER MYSTERIES (Thriller Trilogy). Anna Katharine Green
I can forgive much more in you than you think, and if you really love me—-”
“Stop! Let us understand each other.” He had turned mortally pale, and met her eyes with something akin to alarm. “What do you allude to in speaking of last night? I did not know there was anything said by us in our talk together—-”
“I do not allude to our talk.”
“Or—or in the one dance we had—-”
“Frederick, a dance is innocent.”
The word seemed to strike him with the force of a blow.
“Innocent,” he repeated, “innocent?” becoming paler still as the full weight of her meaning broke gradually upon him.
“I followed you into town,” she whispered, coming closer, and breathing the words into his ear. “But what I saw you do there will not prevent me from obeying you if you say: ‘Follow me wherever I go, Amabel; henceforth our lives are one.’”
“My God!”
It was all he said, but it seemed to create a gulf between them. In the silence that followed, the evil spirit latent beneath her beauty began to make itself evident even in the smile which no longer called into view the dimples which belong to guileless mirth, while upon his face, after the first paralysing effect of her words had passed, there appeared an expression of manly resistance that betrayed a virtue which as yet had never appeared in his selfish and altogether reckless life.
That this was more than a passing impulse he presently made evident by lifting his hand and pushing her slowly back.
“I do not know what you saw me do,” said he; “but whatever it was, it can make no difference in our relations.”
Her whisper, which had been but a breath before, became scarcely audible.
“I did not pause at the gate you entered,” said she. “I went in after you.”
A gasp of irresistible feeling escaped him, but he did not take his eyes from her face.
“It was a long time before you came out,” she went on, “but previous to that time the shade of a certain window was thrust aside, and—-”
“Hush!” he commanded, in uncontrollable passion, pressing his hand with impulsive energy against her mouth. “Not another word of that, or I shall forget you are a woman or that I have ever loved you.”
Her eyes, which were all she had remaining to plead with, took on a peculiar look of quiet satisfaction, and power. Seeing it, he let his hand fall and for the first time began to regard her with anything but a lover’s eyes.
“I was the only person in sight at that time,” she continued. “You have nothing to fear from the world at large.”
“Fear?”
The word made its own echo; she had no need to emphasise it even by a smile. But she watched him as it sunk into his consciousness with an intentness it took all his strength to sustain. Suddenly her bearing and expression changed. The few remains of sweetness in her face vanished, and even the allurement which often lasts when the sweetness is gone, disappeared in the energy which now took possession of her whole threatening and inflexible personality.
“Marry me,” she cried, “or I will proclaim you to be the murderer of
Agatha Webb.”
She had seen the death of love in his eyes.
Chapter VIII.
“A Devil That Understands Men”
Frederick Sutherland was a man of finer mental balance than he himself, perhaps, had ever realised. After the first few moments of stupefaction following the astounding alternative which had been given him, he broke out with the last sentence she probably expected to hear:
“What do you hope from a marriage with me, that to attain your wishes you thus sacrifice every womanly instinct?”
She met him on his own ground.
“What do I hope?” She actually glowed with the force of her secret desire. “Can you ask a poor girl like me, born in a tenement house, but with tastes and ambitions such as are usually only given to those who can gratify them? I want to be the rich Mr. Sutherland’s daughter; acknowledged or unacknowledged, the wife of one who can enter any house in Boston as an equal. With a position like that I can rise to anything. I feel that I have the natural power and aptitude. I have felt it since I was a small child.”
“And for that—-” he began.
“And for that,” she broke in, “I am quite willing to overlook a blot on your record. Confident that you will never repeat the risk of last night, I am ready to share the burden of your secret through life. If you treat me well, I am sure I can make that burden light for you.”
With a quick flush and an increase of self-assertion, probably not anticipated by her, he faced the daring girl with a desperate resolution that showed how handsome he could be if his soul once got control of his body.
“Woman,” he cried, “they were right; you are little less than a devil.”
Did she regard it as a compliment? Her smile would seem to say so.
“A devil that understands men,” she answered, with that slow dip of her dimples that made her smile so dangerous. “You will not hesitate long over this matter; a week, perhaps.”
“I shall not hesitate at all. Seeing you as you are, makes my course easy. You will never share any burden with me as my wife.”
Still she was not abashed.
“It is a pity,” she whispered; “it would have saved you such unnecessary struggle. But a week is not long to wait. I am certain of you then. This day week at twelve o’clock, Frederick.”
He seized her by the arm, and lost to everything but his rage, shook her with a desperate hand.
“Do you mean it?” he cried, a sudden horror showing itself in his face, notwithstanding his efforts to conceal it.
“I mean it so much,” she assured him, “that before I came home just now I paid a visit to the copse over the way. A certain hollow tree, where you and I have held more than one tryst, conceals within its depths a package containing over one thousand dollars. Frederick, I hold your life in my hands.”
The grasp with which he held her relaxed; a mortal despair settled upon his features, and recognising the impossibility of further concealing the effect of her words upon him, he sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. She viewed him with an air of triumph, which brought back some of her beauty. When she spoke it was to say:
“If you wish to join me in Springfield before the time I have set, well and good. I am willing that the time of our separation should be shortened, but it must not be lengthened by so much as a day. Now, if you will excuse me, I will go and pack my trunks.”
He shuddered; her voice penetrated him to the quick.
Drawing herself up, she looked down on him with a strange mixture of passion and elation.
“You need fear no indiscretion on my part, so long as our armistice lasts,” said she. “No one can drag the truth from me while any hope remains of your doing your duty by me in the way I have suggested.”
And still he did not move.
“Frederick?”
Was it her voice that was thus murmuring his name? Can the tiger snarl one moment and fawn the next?
“Frederick, I have a final word to say—a last farewell. Up to