At that she drew back in a startled way as though his words had gone beyond her expectations.

"How do I know I can trust you?" she said presently, half to herself, half to him.

"You can," he said, and it was as though he flung the whole of his enigmatic and vivid personality into those two words.

"You can," he said again. "Absolutely."

"I must think," she muttered, pressing her hands to her head. "So much depends--how can I trust you? Why should I--why?"

"Because I'll trust you first," he answered with a touch of exultation in his manner. "Listen to me and I'll tell you everything. And that means I put my life in your hands. Well, that's nothing; I would do that any time; but other people's lives will be in your power, too--yes, and everything I'm here for, everything. Now listen."

"Not now," she interrupted sharply. "He may be watching, listening--he generally is." Again there was no need between them to specify to whom the p.r.o.noun referred. "Will you meet me tonight near the sweet-pea border--about nine?"

She glided away as she spoke without waiting for him to answer, and as soon as he was free from the magic of her presence, reaction came and he was torn by a thousand doubts and fears and worse.

"Why, I'm mad, mad," he groaned. "I've no right to tell what I said I would, no right at all."

And again there returned to him his vivid, dreadful memory of how she had started on that midnight drive with her car so awfully laden.

And again there returned to him his old appalling doubt:

"Did she not know?"

And though he would willingly have left his life in her hands, he knew he had no right to put that of others there, and yet it seemed to him he must keep the appointment and the promise he had made.

About nine that evening, then, he made his way to the sweet-pea border, though, as he went, he resolved that he would not tell her what he had said he would.

Because he trusted his own strength so little when he was with her, he confirmed this resolution by an oath he swore to himself: and even that he was not certain would be a sure protection against the witchery she wielded.

So it was with a mind doubtful and troubled more than it had ever been since the beginning of these things that he came to the border where the sweet-peas grew, and saw a dark shadow already close by them.

But when he came a little nearer he saw that it was not Ella who was there but Deede Dawson and his first thought was that she had betrayed him.

"That you, Dunn?" Deede Dawson hailed him in his usual pleasant, friendly manner.

"Yes," Dunn answered warily, keeping himself ready for any eventuality.

Deede Dawson took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it and offered one to Dunn, who refused it abruptly.

Deede Dawson laughed at that in his peculiar, mirthless way.

"Am I being the third that's proverbially no company?" he asked. "Were you expecting to find some one else here? I thought I saw a white frock vanish just as I came up."

Dunn made no answer, and Deede Dawson continued after a pause

"That's why I waited. You are being just a little bit rapid in this affair, aren't you?"

"I don't know why. You said something, didn't you?" muttered Dunn, beginning to think that, after all, Deede Dawson's presence here was due to accident--or rather to his unceasing and unfailing watchfulness, and not to any treachery of Ella's.

"Yes, I did, didn't I?" he agreed pleasantly. "But you are a working gardener taken on out of charity to give you a chance and keep you out of gaol, and you are looking a little high when you think of your master's ward and daughter, aren't you?"

"There was a time when I shouldn't have thought so," answered Dunn.

"We're talking of the present, my good man," Deede Dawson said impatiently. "If you want the girl you must win her. It can be done, but it won't be easy."

"Tell me how," said Dunn.

"Oh, that's going too fast and too far," answered the other with his mirthless laugh. "Now, there's Mr. John Clive--what about him?"

"I'll answer for him," replied Dunn slowly and thickly. "I've put better men than John Clive out of my way before today."

"That's the way to talk," cried Deede Dawson. "Dunn, dare you play a big game for big stakes?"

"Try me," said Dunn.

"If I showed you," Deede Dawson's voice sank to a whisper, "if I showed you a pretty girl for a wife--a fortune to win--what would you say?"

"Try me," said Dunn again, and then, making his voice as low and hoa.r.s.e as was Dunn's, he asked:

"Is it Clive?"

"Later--perhaps," answered Deede Dawson. "There's some one else--first.

Are you ready?"

"Try me," said Dunn for the third time, and as he spoke his quick ear caught the faint sound of a retreating footstep, and he told himself that Ella must have lingered near and had perhaps heard all they said.

"Try me," he said once more, speaking more loudly and clearly this time.

CHAPTER XIV. LOVE-MAKING AT NIGHT

Dunn went to his room that night with the feeling that a crisis was approaching. And he wished very greatly that he knew how much Ella had overheard of his talk with her stepfather, and what interpretation she had put upon it.

He determined that in the morning he would take the very first opportunity he could find of speaking to her.

But in the morning it appeared that Mrs. Dawson had had a bad night, and was very unwell, and Ella hardly stirred from her side all day.

Even when Clive called in the afternoon she would not come down, but sent instead a message begging to be excused because of her mother's indisposition, and Dunn, from a secure spot in the garden, watched the young man retire, looking very disconsolate.

This day, too, Dunn saw nothing of Deede Dawson, for that gentleman immediately after breakfast disappeared without saying anything to anybody, and by night had still not returned.

Dunn therefore was left entirely to himself, and to him the day seemed one of the longest he had ever spent.

That Ella remained so persistently with her mother troubled him a good deal, for he did not think such close seclusion on her part could be really necessary.

He was inclined to fear that Ella had overheard enough of what had pa.s.sed between him and Deede Dawson to rouse her mistrust, and that she was therefore deliberately keeping out of his way.