She paused and clasped her hands before her. Crabb sat silent beside her, but his brow was clouded. When he spoke it was in a voice low and constrained.
"Do you think it kind--wise to speak of this now?"
"I was thinking that perhaps if he'd had a little luck----"
Patricia turned toward him and with a swift movement took one of his hands in both of hers.
"Don't speak in that way," she pleaded. "You mustn't."
But his fingers still refused to respond to her pressure.
"If I think of him at all, it is because I have learned how great a thing is love and how much the greater must be its loss. You know," she whispered, timidly, "you know I--I love you."
They were so absorbed that they did not hear the sound behind them--a suppressed moan like that of an animal in pain.
"Will you forgive me?" asked the girl, at last. "It is all over now. I shall never speak of it again. I've spoiled your evening. You don't regret?"
"I'll promise to be good," she said, softly. "I'll do whatever you ask me----"
"Yes," she murmured, "whenever you wish."
He took her in his arms and kissed her. They stood for some time deaf to all voices but those in their hearts. There was a breaking of tiny twigs under the trees behind them and a drab figure came out into the open on the other side and vanished into the darkness by the garden wall. And as they walked back into the house neither guessed just what had happened except that some new miracle, which, really, is very old, had happened to them.
As a matter of fact, when Patricia announced the miracle in the form of her engagement to Mortimer Crabb a prayer of thanksgiving went up from at least three young women of her acquaintance. And though these feminine petitioners were left as much to their own devices as before the announcement, there was a certain comfort in knowing that she was out of the way--at least, that she was as much out of the way as it was possible for Patricia to be, bound or untrammeled. Jack Masters went abroad, Steve Ventnor actually went to work, and various other swains sought pastures new.
Ross Burnett was best man and, when the ceremony and breakfast were over, saw the happy couple off upon the _Blue Wing_, for their long Southern cruise. They offered him conduct as far as Washington, whither he was bound, but he knew from the look in their eyes that he was not wanted, and with a promise to meet them in New York when they returned, he waved them a good-by from the pier and took up the thread of his Government business where it had been dropped. It is not often that good comes out of villainy, and the memory of the adventure in which Crabb had involved him, often troubled his conscience. What if some day he should meet Baron Arnim or Baron Arnim's man and be recognized? At the State Department Crowthers had asked him no questions and he had thought it wise not to offer explanations. But certain it was that to that adventure alone was his present prosperity directly due. His South American mission successfully concluded, he had returned to Washington with the assurance that other and even more important work awaited him. His point of view had changed. All he had needed was initiative, and, Crabb having supplied that deficiency, he had learned to face the world again with the squared shoulders of the man who had at last found himself. The world was his oyster and he would open it how and when he liked.