"No," said Varney, pulling himself sharply together. "Not like that."
The shock of her voice and look, even more than her words, had been stunning in their first unexpectedness. But now he remembered, with infinite relief, that of course she did not understand the matter at all; of course she would speak and look very differently when he had made his explanation.
"You think," Varney said, "that I _mind_ your knowing about our poor little plot--that I am found out and my plans are all upset? How on earth could you think that? Why, that's all like something in another life. Don't you know what my being here at this moment means? The thing is all over, Miss Carstairs--all past and done with an hour before you ever saw your mother. I gave it up voluntarily. When the time came, just now on the yacht, I found out that it was impossible--unthinkable--I couldn't do it. The game was up then. That is one thing that your mother could not tell you, and it was to tell you this, and all the rest of it, that I followed you here."
She stood on the other side of the gate, hardly an arm's length from him, looking at him; a figure so pretty, so dainty, so extremely decorative that she seemed incapable of giving anything but pleasure. But in the eyes that met his own so unwaveringly, he read at once the contradiction of this.
"Yes, I suppose that would always be the way, wouldn't it?--that whenever I found out, you were just going to tell me?"
If she had searched her mind for a way to strangle his headlong self-defence, she could not possibly have done it more effectually. There followed a horrible pause.
"You mean ... that you do not believe me?"
"In the little while that I have known you, have you given me much reason to?"
"Can't you see that that is exactly the reason I wanted to tell you all the truth now?"
"Why did you wait till _now_? Weren't there chances to tell me this afternoon on my father's yacht? But--there's no use to speak of all this. It is enough that I know it now."
He was aware that her voice had lost that hard and polished lightness with which she had first struck at him; on this last sentence, he thought that it trembled a little; and in a flash, he saw the whole matter from her side of it, and for the moment ceased to think about himself.