"He said that if I took his tip I shouldn't stand upon the order of my going, but go at once, and go as far as possible between now and to-morrow." She put both hands to her left side, as if unconscious that she had a plate in one and a teaspoon in the other. "Rodney! Then--then--what are you going to do?" "Nothing." "But if he tells?" "Tells what?" "He said to me last night that if anyone knows that--that someone has killed a person, and doesn't at once inform the police, that's being an accessory after the fact." "Well? He was merely acquainting you with what I take is a legal truism." "Then he said that, whatever I might choose to do, he did not mean to be an accessory, either before the fact or after. Then he looked at me in such a way--I knew what he meant--and he went right off to bed without saying another word." "What had you been talking about?" "About--your uncle." "Had he introduced the subject or had you?" "He had; he would keep talking about it. Rodney, he knows, and--he's going to tell." "Then, in that case, it looks as if you will gain little by becoming my wife, and that I shall gain nothing." "Rodney, I want you to get out of your head what I said the other night. I don't want to force you to marry me, and I never did." "Then you've rather an unfortunate way of expressing yourself, don't you think so, my dear Mabel?" "I--I didn't know how else to do what I wanted to do. It's quite true that if I'm not going to be your wife I'll kill myself; but that doesn't matter--I'd just as soon die as live. But I do want to save you, and the only way I can do it is for you to marry me." "That may keep you from playing the tell-tale, but how is it going to affect Mr. Dale?" "He won't tell if I'm your wife." "Won't he? Why? I should have thought, if your story's correct, that he'd have told all the more, that disappointment would have inflamed him to madness." Rodney, as he said this, struck a match to light his pipe, and laughed. Nothing could have seemed less like laughter than the girl's white face and haunted eyes.