The full rich tones of her voice vibrated with the heat of her words, her bosom rose and fell as in her indignation wave after wave of expression swept across her face, each one intensifying the charm she had for him.
"I suppose you include me in your list of suspects," she blurted out as he did not speak. "Why don"t you say so at once? Your questions certainly suggest it."
"Do they?" he asked, with a smile which irritated her.
"Yes, they do. What else do they suggest? It would be quite in keeping with the rest of the business--you riding out here to ask me pointless questions while the people most likely to have been concerned in the robbery are left alone. They are known, I suppose you will say, where I am a stranger, someone you have never seen before----"
"You are wrong," he interrupted, still smiling; "I have seen you before."
Her eyes concentrated on his with keen intensity.
"When? Where?" she asked sharply.
"We were fellow-pa.s.sengers by a coach four or five months back. You have forgotten me, but I"--now that the personal note had been struck, the note he wished so much to sound and yet shrank from, he was almost carried away by it; by an effort he checked himself, and instead of telling her all that the meeting had meant for him, he added, "I rarely forget a face when I have once seen it."
She flashed a swift glance at him, reading in his eyes, in his face, in his att.i.tude, the confirmation of what she knew from the tone of his voice.
"But you--you do not--remember me," he said slowly as she did not reply. He saw the glance, saw the fleeting questioning light in her eyes, and with the fatuity bred of love-blindness, misread it.
"I do remember--distinctly," she answered softly. "I recognised you as you came on to the verandah. I thought it was you who had forgotten--or did not wish to remember."
As she spoke the last words softly, demurely, she raised her eyes to his and looked steadily at him with no sign on her face of her recent indignation.
"I not wish to remember? I not wish to remember you?" he exclaimed in a ringing tone. "Why--it was because I have never ceased to remember that I came here to-night. Your name was mentioned at Waroona--it was the only clue you gave me when we parted, the only clue I had to follow when I tried to find you, tried to trace you every day since then. I have never ceased to seek for you, never ceased to think of you, nor to remember the day I met you. Had you not been here to-night, had I found it was someone else with a similar name, I should not have forgotten you--I shall never do that--never."
She sat back in her chair, her eyes downcast, a slight frown puckering her brows. He saw the frown as she spoke and it checked his words, but he continued to watch her steadily, noting the graceful, yet seemingly unstudied way in which the wavy ma.s.s of her luxuriant hair was coiled on her head, the clear whiteness of her skin, the heavy fringe of her drooping lashes. Even as he watched she raised her eyes to his.
For one brief moment she allowed them to rest, filled with an earnestness and depth of softness that made his pulses leap again.
Impulsively he stretched out his hand to her across the table.
She lowered her glance, and a faint smile flickered round her lips.
"I must away," she said softly, as she arose. "You will need a good night"s rest after your long and wearying ride."
He pushed away his chair, as he started abruptly to his feet. The warmth of his impulse went cold.
"I shall start with the dawn or before it," he said, keeping his eyes averted from the glamour of her face. "I have a riding-cloak. I will take this hammock-chair on to the verandah. Don"t let me disturb you."
"But you cannot go in the morning without a bite," she replied.
"I shall require nothing," he said brusquely. "I shall be away before you are awake. I am merely staying to set your mind at rest on the question of the house being visited and robbed. Don"t let me disturb you--or detain you."
She bent her head slowly and gracefully.
"As you will," she replied in a gentle voice. "Good night, Mr. Durham."
Without waiting for a reply she turned and went from the room, closing the door quietly after her.
He stood where she had left him, staring fixedly at the closed door.
"I was a fool to come, a greater fool to speak," he muttered savagely.
"What satisfaction is there in knowing who she is, when----"
He swung round petulantly, diving his hand into his pocket for a pipe.
When it was filled and lighted, he dragged his chair out on to the verandah, lowered the lamp flame to a glimmer, pushed-to the window, and lay back in the chair, blowing furious clouds of smoke out upon the night and staring, with unseeing eyes, into the dark.
But always before him there floated the vision of the speaking grey-blue eyes looking at him from the shelter of their dark-fringed lashes; always in his brain he heard the gentle melody of her voice as she had last spoken to him, and always there came to taunt and goad him the jarring memory of the half-mocking way in which she had pushed back upon himself the frank revelation he had made. But though it jarred, it had no power to lessen the fascination she exercised over him. Despite her rebuff, despite the seeming hopelessness of his infatuation, it held him. The more he tried to force it back, the stronger it grew; the greater, the more beautiful and more lovable did Mrs. Burke appear to be.
The jarring note pa.s.sed from his memory. Under the soothing quiet of the night and the stillness of the bush, looming dark and mysterious against the sky, scarcely less sombre with only the light of the stars to illumine it, his fancy was filled with the image he had carried in his mind for so many months. The weariness of an arduous day added its softening influence, and he drifted out upon the sea of dreams and thence into a deep slumber, while yet his pipe was unfinished.
CHAPTER VI
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
While Harding sat talking to Brennan in the office, Bessie came to him with a note.
"Mrs. Eustace asked me to give you this, sir," the girl said, as she handed it to him at the door.
He tore open the envelope. A single sheet of paper was enclosed, on which was written, "For the sake of the bygone days, come to me."
"Where is Mrs. Eustace?" he asked.
"She"s in her room, Mr. Harding, in her little sitting-room."
It was one of the rooms where he had never been, a tiny chamber at the far end of the pa.s.sage which she had made into a boudoir. Once he had seen into it through the open door, seen the daintiness with which it was decorated, a daintiness redolent of her as he had known her in the days when, for him, the world held no other woman.
And she had chosen this as the place where they should meet!
He knocked at the door, and heard her voice answer, bidding him to come in. She was sitting in a cane lounge-chair, listless, pale, and weary-eyed.
As he entered she gave him one swift glance and then looked away.
"Do you wish to see me, Mrs. Eustace?" he asked in a cold, formal voice.
She did not reply at once, but sat with her head bowed and her hands loosely clasped in her lap.
"If you will say what you wish to as quickly as you can, I shall be obliged," he said. "Brennan is in the office, and I have some matters to arrange with him."
Her head was raised slowly, steadily, until her face was turned full towards him.
"Will you please arrange them first?" she replied. "I want to say something which may take some time, and I--I would not inconvenience the bank."
"I would rather hear what you have to say first, Mrs. Eustace."