"And how did you find it out at last?" asked Jessie, without any apparent emotion.
"I was rooting about among his papers one day, when I found some of your letters, my dear. It was the greatest surprise I've ever had in my life."
"He has kept my letters, has he?" said the woman, in an eager, passionate way, breaking for a moment through the restraint she had hitherto put upon herself.
"He _has_ kept them; so much the worse for him, as things have turned out," said Pringle, grimly.
"I put back the letters where I had found them, and waited for him."
"And waited for him?" cried the woman, wonderingly.
"Yes; he was away from home at the time I discovered the letters, and I waited till he came back."
"It was only the night before last that he got back home. I had made up my mind from the first how to act. He was only here for the night. He was going to start away again next morning; but I guessed he wouldn't leave without visiting the safe in the strong-room. So instead of going up to bed, I came down here and waited in the dark for him. I seemed to have been waiting a month, but it was only a few hours, when he came. He went forward into the strong-room, and turned on the gas. Then I stole swiftly after him. He did not hear me--he did not see me till the last moment; and then it was too late. Before he could reach the iron door, I had shut it on him and turned the key."
"I locked him in. I made him my prisoner; and there he is at this very moment."
The woman had changed colour and started to her feet when her father made this disclosure. But another thought seemed to strike her, and she sat down again, her ashy face turned full upon him, and a strange, half-savage, half-defiant look in her eyes, which it was just as well that the old man did not notice.
"There's nothing like taking things comfortably," he said. "What a fanny girl you are," he added presently. "I thought when you heard how I had bowled out the scoundrel who had blasted both your life and mine, that the least you could say would be, 'Well done!' But there you sit as cool as a cucumber, and as mum as a mouse--just as if I had been telling you a bit of news out of yesterday's paper."
"Your news has taken me so much by surprise, that I don't know what to say," replied Jessie; "I want time to think it all over."