"Dudley has departed. I believe they are on to me. He went to Boston this
afternoon, and he actually was gruff with me just before leaving. The size
of the matter is, some one has posted him, and they are all up to my game
as a spy. I wish I were out of it. Never was so ashamed of a thing in my
life; don't feel like looking any one in the face. They've all been nice
to me. But what's the difference? They're all interested. She went to the
train with him and--the rest of us. I'll never forget how sad she looked
as she held his hand and bade him good-by. I carried the parasol back to
the hotel, and I know I hurt her feelings when I maliciously said that it
would look well with a deep black border. She almost looked a hole through
me. Fine eyes. I don't know what is coming next. She is liable to slip out
from under my eye at any time and fly away to meet him somewhere else. I
telegraphed this message to Grover & Dickhut:
"He has gone. She still here. What shall I do?
"Got this answer:
"Stay there and watch. They suspect you. Don't let her get away.
"But how the devil am I to watch day and night?"
The next week was rather an uneventful one for Rossiter. There was no
sign of Havens and no effort on her part to leave Eagle Nest.
As the days went by he became more and more vigilant. In fact, his watch
was incessant and very much of a personal one. He walked and drove with
her, and he invented all sorts of excuses to avoid Mrs. Van Haltford and
Miss Crozier. The purple parasol and he had become almost inseparable
friends. The fear that Havens might return at any time kept him in a fever
of anxiety and dread. Now that he was beginning to know her for himself he
could not endure the thought that she cared for another man. Strange to
say, he did not think of her husband. Old Wharton had completely faded
from his mind; it was Havens that he envied. He saw himself sinking into
her net, falling before her wiles, but he did not rebel.
He went to bed each night apprehensive that the next morning should find
him alone and desolate at Eagle Nest, the bird flown. It hurt him to think
that she would laugh over her feat of outwitting him. He was not guarding
her for old Wharton now; he was in his own employ. All this time he knew
it was wrong, and that she was trifling with him while the other was away.
Yet he had eyes, ears, and a heart like all men, and they were for none
save the pretty wife of Godfrey Wharton.
He spoke to her on several occasions of Dudley and gnashed his teeth when
he saw a look of sadness, even longing, come into her dark eyes. At such
times he was tempted to tell her that he knew all, to confound her by
charging her with guilt. But he could not collect the courage. For some
unaccountable reason he held his bitter tongue. And so it was that
handsome Sam Rossiter, spy and good fellow, fell in love with a woman who
had a very dark page in her history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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