Ingram. She herself had expressed the wish to prolong that talk when Miss Wilpert interrupted it; and failing that, she had spontaneously suggested that we should meet again the next morning. It would have been less painful to think that she had fled before the ardour of my wooing than before the dread of what Shreve might reveal about her; but I knew the latter reason was the more likely.

            The discovery stunned me. It took me some hours to get beyond the incredible idea that this woman, whose ways were so gentle, with whose whole nature I felt myself in such delightful harmony, had stood her trial as a murderess—and the murderess of her own father. But the more I revolved this possibility the less I believed in it. There might have been other—and perhaps not very creditable—reasons for her abrupt flight; but that she should be flying because she knew that Shreve had recognized her seemed, on further thought, impossible.

            Then I began to look at the question from another angle. Supposing she were Kate Spain? Well, her father had been assassinated by a passing tramp; so the jury had decided. Probably suspicion would never have rested on her if it had not been notorious in Cayuga that the old man was a selfish miser, who for years had made his daughter’s life intolerable. To those who knew the circumstances it had seemed conceivable, seemed almost natural, that the poor creature should finally turn against him. Yet she had had no difficulty in proving her innocence; it was clearly established that she was out of the house when the crime was committed. Her having been suspected, and tried, was simply one of those horrible blunders of which innocent persons have so often been the victims. Do what she would to live it down, her name would always remain associated with that sordid tragedy; and wasn’t it natural that she should flee from any reminder of it, any suspicion that she had been recognized, and her identity proclaimed by a scandal-mongering journalist? If she were Kate Spain, the dread of having the fact made known to every one in that crowded hotel was enough to drive her out of it. But if her departure had another cause, in no way connected with Shreve’s arrival, might it not have been inspired by a sudden whim of Cassie Wilpert’s? Mrs. Ingram had told me that Cassie was bored and wanted to get away; and it was all too clear that, however loudly she proclaimed her independence, she always ended by obeying Miss Wilpert.

            It was a melancholy alternative. Poor woman—poor woman either way, I thought. And by the time I had reached this conclusion, I was in the train which was hurrying me to Milan. Whatever happened I must see her, and hear from her own lips what she was flying from.

            I hadn’t much hope of running down the fugitives at Stresa or Baveno. It was not likely that they would go to either of the places they had mentioned to the concierges; but I went to both the next morning, and carried out a minute inspection of all the hotel lists. As I had foreseen, the travellers were not to be found, and I was at a loss to know where to turn next. I knew, however, that the luggage the ladies had sent to Milan was not likely to arrive till the next day, and concluded that they would probably wait for it in the neighbourhood; and suddenly I remembered that I had once advised Mrs. Ingram—who was complaining that she was growing tired of fashionable hotels—to try a little pension on the lake of Orta, where she would be miles away from “palaces”, and from the kind of people who frequent them. It was not likely that she would have remembered this place; but I had put a pencil stroke beside the name in her guide-book, and that might recall it to her. Orta, at any rate, was not far off; and I decided to hire a car at Stresa, and go there before carrying on my journey.

              

 

 VI.
 
 

            I don’t suppose I shall ever get out of my eyes the memory of the public sitting-room in the pension at Orta. It was there that I waited for Mrs. Ingram to come down, wondering if she would, and what we should say to each other when she did.

            There were three windows in a row, with clean heavily starched Nottingham lace curtains carefully draped to exclude the best part of the matchless view over lake and mountains. To make up for this privation the opposite wall was adorned with a huge oil-painting of a Swiss water-fall. In the middle of the room was a table of sham ebony, with ivory inlays, most of which had long since worked out of their grooves, and on the table the usual dusty collection of tourist magazines, fashion papers, and tattered copies of Zion’s Weekly and the Christian Science Monitor.

            What is the human mind made of, that mine, at such a moment, should have minutely and indelibly registered these depressing details? I even remember smiling at the thought of the impression my favourite pension must have made on travellers who had just moved out of the most expensive suite in the Mont Soleil Palace.

            And then Mrs. Ingram came in.

            My first impression was that something about her dress or the arrangement of her hair had changed her. Then I saw that two dabs of rouge had been unskilfully applied to her pale cheeks, and a cloud of powder dashed over the dark semicircles under her eyes. She must have undergone some terrible moral strain since our parting to feel the need of such a disguise.

            “I thought I should find you here,” I said.

            She let me take her two hands, but at first she could not speak. Then she said, in an altered voice: “You must have wondered—”

            “Yes; I wondered.”

            “It was Cassie who suddenly decided—”

            “I supposed so.”

            She looked at me beseechingly. “But she was right, you know.”

            “Right—about what?”

            Her rouged lips began to tremble, and she drew her hands out of mine.

            “Before you say anything else,” I interrupted, “there’s one thing you must let me say. I want you to marry me.”

            I had not meant to bring it out so abruptly; but something in her pitiful attempt to conceal her distress had drawn me closer to her, drawn me past all doubts and distrusts, all thought of evasion or delay.

            She looked at me, still without speaking, and two tears ran over her lids, and streaked the untidy powder on her cheeks.

            “No—no—no!” she exclaimed, lifting her thin hand and pressing it against my lips. I drew it down and held it fast.

            “Why not? You knew I was going to ask you, the day before yesterday, and when we were interrupted you promised to hear me the next morning.