"You love me!" she murmured softly, and looked at Ellis.
Something in her regard, her tone, in her whole attitude, seemed to melt the frozen silence of the man. He sprang forward and touched her hand.
"You are not angry?" he asked, with eagerness.
The touch recalled Mrs. Moxton to a sense of what she owed to herself, and woke in her a feeling of wrath at the audacity of the man, who could speak the word to a woman lately widowed in so terrible a manner.
"How dare you!" she cried angrily, retreating. "What must you think of me to talk like that!"
"I think the world of you," replied Ellis, doggedly. "I have said the truth."
"You deceive yourself. What you take for the truth is fantasy. You cannot love one whom you have known only three weeks."
"In romances, I grant, but not in real life." She paused and burst out laughing. "Oh, it is too absurd."
Ellis was piqued. "I fail to see the absurdity. I speak as I feel."
For the moment Mrs. Moxton appeared to meditate an answer to this plain statement. Suddenly she bit her lip, drew back and shook her head. "You speak folly. You think madness," she said. "Consider! I am a three weeks' widow. My husband died by violence, and his death is not avenged. My name is smirched. My--no! This is no time for such talk. Let us forget the words you have uttered."
"Then I must lose my friend," said Mrs. Moxton, determinedly. "I really cannot meet you on these terms. I am a newly-made widow, not a possible wife for you."
"Let the future look after itself," she cried petulantly. "What we have to do, is to attend to the present. You wish to help me. Do so by leaving this crime to be punished by Heaven."
"I can bear that. I have borne worse things. Oh, do not look so astonished, Dr. Ellis. I have had a queer up-and-down, topsy-turvy sort of life. Some day I may tell it to you, but we don't know each other well enough for that yet. If I find that you deserve my confidence---" She broke off the sentence abruptly. "Never mind that now. I have work to do. Yes! I shall take your advice about calling on Mr. Busham. This very day I shall call and ask him about the will. Could you meet me here at three o'clock, doctor?"
Ellis felt his breath taken away by the boldness of the demand. "If you wish me to come."