"Oh no, I didn't tell on them. I didn't know what they were up to when they used me for-- But I'm skidding now. I want to tell you--terribly. But I simply must not. I made an awful mistake that night at Mrs. Prothero's in pretending to be ill." "You only pretended?" "Yes, to get you away. You see, Lady Clifton-Wyatt got after me, accused me of being a spy, of carrying messages that resulted in the sinking of ships and the killing of men. She said that the police came to our house, and Sir Joseph tried to kill one of them and killed his own wife and then was shot by an officer and that they gave out the story that Sir Joseph and Lady Webling died of ptomaine poisoning. She said Nicky Easton was shot in the Tower. Oh, an awful story she told, and I was afraid she'd tell you, so I spirited you away on the pretext of illness." Davidge was astounded at this confirmation of Larrey's story. He said: "But it wasn't true what Lady C.-W. told?" "Most of it was false, but it was fiction founded on fact, and I couldn't explain it without breaking my oath. And now I've pretty nearly broken it, after all. I've sprained it badly." "Don't you want to go on and--finish it off?" "I want to--oh, how I want to! but I've got to save a few shreds of respectability. I kidnapped you the day you were going to tea with Lady C.-W. to keep you from her. I wish now I'd let you go. Then you'd have known the worst of me--or worse than the worst." She turned a harrowed glance his way, and saw, to her bewilderment, that he was smiling broadly. Then he seized her hands and felt a need to gather her home to his arms. She was so amazed that she fell back to stare at him. Studying his radiant face, she somehow guessed that he had known part of her story before and was glad to hear her confess it, but her intuition missed fire when she guessed at the source of his information. "You have been talking to Lady Clifton-Wyatt, after all!" "Not since I saw her with you." "Then who told you?" He laughed now, for it pleased him mightily to have her read his heart so true. "The main thing is that you told me. And now once more I ask you: will you marry me?" This startled her indeed. She startled him no less by her brusquerie: "Certainly not." "And why not?" "I'll marry no man who is so careless whom he marries as you are." CHAPTER IX The whimsical solemnity of this made him roar. But a man does not love a woman the less for being feminine, and when she thwarts him by a womanliness she delights him excruciatingly. But Mamise was in earnest. She believed in one emotion at a time. It offended her to have Davidge suggest that the funeral baked meats of her tragedy should coldly furnish forth a wedding breakfast. She wanted to revel awhile in her elegiac humor and pay full honor to her sorrow, full penalty for her guilt. She put aside his amorous impatience and returned to her theme.