Surely, if the jewels had been taken from him with his
cognizance, the hue and cry would have been out and Anisty would not have
dared to linger so long in the neighborhood!
To be just with herself, the girl had not gone to the restaurant with much
real hope of finding Maitland there. Curiosity had drawn her,--just to see
if.... But it was too preposterous to credit, that he should have cared
enough.... Quite too preposterous! It was her cup, her bitter cup, to know
that _she_ had learned to care enough--at sight!... And she recalled (with
what pangs of shame and misery begged expression!) how her heart had been
stirred when she had found him (as she thought) true to his tryst: even as
she recalled the agony and distress of mind with which she had a moment
later fathomed Anisty's impersonation.
For, of course, she had known that Maitland was Maitland and none other,
from the instant when he told her to make good her escape and leave him to
brazen it out: a task to daunt even as bold and resourceful a criminal as
Anisty, and more especially if he were called upon to don the mask at a
minute's notice, as Maitland had pretended to. Or, if she had not actually
known, she had been led to suspect: and it had hardly needed what she had
heard him say to the servants, when he thought her flying hotfoot over the
lawn to safety, to harden suspicion into certainty.
And now that he should find her here, a second time a trespasser, doubly
an ingrate,--that he should have caught her red-handed in this abominably
ungrateful treachery!.
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