Like Gay under similar circumstances, she was infuriated by the combined flimsiness and sincerity of the plea. But, unlike Gay, she was too clever to give herself away and ruin her plans by an outburst of indignation. She only fixed her sad and lovely dark eyes on his and said quietly:
"Is that all you have to say to me, Lundi? With everyone laughing at my humiliation and disappointment--my foolishness!"
He flushed at the use of his name, the tone of her voice, the inference in her words.
"I am most frightfully sorry," he repeated, deeply embarrassed. "It was unutterably caddish of me. I can never forgive myself, or expect you to forgive me."
"I think you know by now that I can forgive you anything," she answered, in a low voice.
"I'm not worth a second thought from any woman," he asseverated firmly.
"But if I think you are?" There was a little break in her voice, and suddenly she put out her hands toward him. "If I cannot help----"
"Mrs. Hading," he interposed hastily, "you don't know what you are saying. I am a blackguard--a scamp, unfit to touch a woman's hand."
"I have not even told you everything about tonight. When you hear what has happened, you won't want to speak to me again." She suddenly took out a little lace handkerchief and began to cry. He stared at her with haggard eyes. "Do you know that I have killed a man tonight?" he said sombrely.
That gave her pause. Her nerves went taut and her face rigid behind the scrap of lace. Even _her_ cold soul balked at murder, and her plans of mingled revenge and self-advancement rocked a little. She looked at him direct now, with eyes full of horrified enquiry.
"I did not mean to distress you with the story," he said. "But I struck a man over the card-table, and they say he is dead."
It seemed to her that she caught a sound of relief, even triumph in the statement--almost as though he was glad to have such a reason for stemming the tide of her words, and not taking the clinging hands she put out to him. Her keen mind was on the alert instantly. What was at the bottom of it all? Perhaps the man was not dead. Perhaps this was just a little trick of Druro's to slip the toils he felt closing round his liberty--her toils! Being a trickster herself, she easily suspected trickery in others. Rapidly she turned the thing over in her mind. She had no intention of involving herself with a man who had got to pay the penalty for committing a crime--but nothing simpler for her than to repudiate him if anything so unpleasant should really arise. On the other hand, in case he was juggling with the truth, she must establish a hold, a bond that, being a man of honour, he would not be able to repudiate. The situation called for the exercise of all the finesse of which she was mistress. She put away her handkerchief and looked at him gravely.