“So I have”—bluntly.
“Then we’re not—not unwelcome
visitors any longer?” the soft, tantalising
voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to
tug at his very heartstrings.
He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands
in his, twisted her round so that she faced him.
“Why do you ask?” he demanded, his voice
suddenly roughened and uneven.
“Because I wanted to know—of course!”—lightly.
“Then—you’re not an unwelcome
visitor. You never have been! From the moment
you came the place was different somehow. When
you go——”
He stopped as though startled by the sound of his
own words—struck by the full significance
of them.
“When you go!” he repeated blankly.
His grip of her slight hands tightened till it was
almost painful. “But you won’t go!
I can’t let you go now! Magda—”
The situation was threatening to get out of hand.
Magda drew quickly away from him, springing to her
feet.
“Don’t talk like that,” she said
hastily. “You don’t mean it, you know.”
With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from
his side and ran down to the river’s edge.
He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet, heard the
splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment
later all he could see was the red of her turban cap,
bobbing like a scarlet poppy on the surface of the
river, and the glimmer of a moon-white arm and shoulder
as a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly away from
him.
He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden
bewildered sense of check and thwarting. The
blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart
thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously
as though to plunge in after the receding gleam of
scarlet still flickering betwixt the branches which
overhung the river.
Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing
his hand across his eyes as though to clear their
vision. What mad impulse was this urging him
on to say and do such things as he had never before
conceived himself saying or doing?
Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her—what?
The sweat broke out on his forehead as the realisation
surged over him.
“God!” he muttered. “God!”
THE LATEST NEWS
Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save
Dan Storran from himself—check the hot
utterance to which he had so nearly given voice and
which to a certain extent she had herself provoked.
Driven by the bitterness of spirit which Michael’s
treatment of her had engendered, she knew that she
had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she had
come to Stockleigh. She had bestowed no thought
on June—pretty, helpless June, watching
with distressed, bewildered eyes while Dan unaccountably
changed towards her, his moods alternating from sullen
unresponsiveness to a kind of forced and contrite tenderness
which she had found almost more difficult to meet
and understand.
