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On which, the best of Tom's supporters said he must have done some dreadful deed, or such a man as Mr Pecksniff never could have felt like that. Tom was out of hearing of their shrewd opinions, and plodded on as steadily as he could go, until he came within sight of the turnpike where the tollman's family had cried out 'Mr Pinch! that frosty morning, when he went to meet young Martin.
Under the challenge of his humorous twinkle, a sudden mischief flashed into Conscience's face. She was tempted to announce herself as William Williams' daughter and let it go at that, but with a swift reconsideration she laughed and told the whole truth. "I am Mr. Tollman's wife." The minister raised his brows in surprise. "Now I don't know why I pictured Mrs.
It was not Eben Tollman's fault ran her logic that this message from Egypt had drawn Stuart Farquaharson dangerously close to his wife's inmost thoughts at a time when, she had told herself, he must henceforth be kept in the far background. But there was no escaping the reality that the cablegram and the letter had brought definite results.
"Yes, doesn't he?" Mrs. Tollman's laugh held a trace of nervous tremor, too. "And I remember saying once that that was just as possible as the idea of Napoleon going into a monastery." "Are we going to swim before breakfast to-morrow?" asked the man, distrusting himself just now with topics touching the past and sentiment.
He still loved her and from that instant, whenever she told herself she did not love him, she must lie. Now she was Tollman's wife. It had almost come in time. Perhaps it had come in time. Conscience turned to the bridesmaid with a queer and unnatural ring in her voice. "Mary," she asked, "just exactly when did this message arrive?"
"Didn't you have another paper, Stuart?" The question came casually from the chair into which he had collapsed. "I might as well put it with the rest while I'm waiting for the brandy." "Yes, I'd forgotten it. Here it is," and the younger man handed back the envelope this time using his left hand. Once more Tollman's luck had held good.
Then their glances met and the girl moved forward. It flashed simultaneously upon both of them that faulty preconceptions had caused a failure of recognition. The tall, young man, whose breadth of shoulder and elasticity of step might have been a boy's, spoke first with an amused riffle in his eyes. "My name is Sam Haymond. Are you, by any chance, Mr. Tollman's daughter?"
She met his gaze with one of equal directness, and he could see an impulse, rather hungry and eager, dawn only to be repressed in her eyes. At last she shook her head. "No," she answered. "But it's good of you to ask me. No, there's nothing that talking about will mend." Eben Tollman's effort at being young was not wholly successful.
After digesting the preliminaries, he began to speak musingly, as though to himself. "Of course if the lady knew that detectives were working on the case, the force of any disclosure would be discounted." His eyes were on his employer as he spoke and he saw Tollman start. Tollman's words, too, came with an impulsiveness which had been absent heretofore.
It was of this that Stuart thought, as, for a half hour, they listened to Tollman's talk, content with brief replies or none at all. Some magic had lulled him, too, into a quietened mood from which had been smoothed the saw-edged raggedness of despair. With a vague wonderment he recognized this metamorphosis.
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