He fidgeted, then spoke rapidly.
"Mrs. Cresswell--this is a personal affair." She reddened angrily. "A love affair"--she paled with something like fear--"and I"--she started to speak, but could not--"I want to know what you think about Zora?"
"About Zora!" she gasped weakly. The sudden reaction, the revulsion of her agitated feelings, left her breathless.
"About Zora. You know I loved her dearly as a boy--how dearly I have only just begun to realize: I've been wondering if I understood--if I wasn't--"
Mrs. Cresswell got angrily to her feet.
"You have come here to speak to me of that--that--" she choked, and Bles thought his worst fears realized.
"Mary, Mary!" Colonel Cresswell's voice broke suddenly in upon them. With a start of fear Mrs. Cresswell rushed out into the hall and closed the door.
"Mary, has that Alwyn nigger been here this afternoon?" Mr. Cresswell was coming up-stairs, carrying his riding whip.
"Why, no!" she answered, lying instinctively before she quite realized what her lie meant. She hesitated. "That is, I haven't seen him. I must have nodded over my book,"--looking toward the little verandah at the front of the upper hall, where her easy chair stood with her book. Then with an awful flash of enlightenment she realized what her lie might mean, and her heart paused.
Cresswell strode up.
"I saw him come up--he must have entered. He's nowhere downstairs," he wavered and scowled. "Have you been in your sitting-room?" And then, not waiting for a reply, he strode to the door.
"But the damned scoundrel wouldn't dare!"
He deliberately placed his hand in his right-hand hip-pocket and threw open the door.
Mary Cresswell stood frozen. The full horror of the thing burst upon her. Her own silly misapprehension, the infatuation of Alwyn for Zora, her thoughtless--no, vindictive--betrayal of him to something worse than death. She listened for the crack of doom. She heard a bird singing far down in the swamp; she heard the soft raising of a window and the closing of a door. And then--great God in heaven! must she live forever in this agony?--and then, she heard the door bang and Mr. Cresswell's gruff voice-"Well, where is he?--he isn't in there!"
Mary Cresswell felt that something was giving way within. She swayed and would have crashed to the bottom of the staircase if just then she had not seen at the opposite end of the hall, near the back stairs, Zora and Alwyn emerge calmly from a room, carrying a basket full of clothes. Colonel Cresswell stared at them, and Zora instinctively put up her hand and fastened her dress at the throat. The Colonel scowled, for it was all clear to him now.