'The walk was too much for her.' The girl's face was flushed, and her tones faint. 'She said she couldn't walk back were it ever so. She spoke to Mrs. Commyns—who was called here, you know—and went to the Rectory. She wants us to send the pony-trap if——'
'Where is Mr. Miles?' Alice's father interrupted her.
'He is following.'
She passed quickly by them into the house. Her face was full of trouble. Traces of tears were visible under her eyes. They heard her hurrying upstairs. Neither of them spoke a word. Dick had his back turned; he was watching the road.
The figure of Miles appeared on the nearest knoll. He walked slowly down the bank, his head bent, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Dick turned to Colonel Bristo.
'You had better leave me to speak to him,' he said. 'I will settle with him on the spot.'
'It ought to come from me,' said the Colonel doubtfully; 'and yet——'
The old man paused. Dick looked at him with some anxiety.
'You had really better leave him to me, sir,' he repeated. 'I am sorry to say I am used to treating with him. There had better be no third party to our last parley. And the fewer words the better, on Alice's account; she need know nothing. Besides, I know your intentions——'
'Yes, yes; that for my part I will take no steps, not even to get back my money; that he may go to-day instead of to-morrow, and leave the country—we will not stop him. Of course, he will be only too glad to get off! Dick, I care nothing about the paltry pounds he has got out of me; he is welcome to them; I do not grudge him them, because of the service he did me—yet if I saw him now, I feel that I should forget to count that service. And you are right about Alice. Speak quietly, and get rid of him quickly. I will not see him unless I am obliged; at least, I will first hear from the dining-room what he has to say to you.'
A moment later the Colonel was at his post in the dining-room. His retreat from the steps, which was really characteristic of the man, is open to misconstruction. He feared nothing worse than an unpleasantness—a disagreeable scene; and he avoided unpleasantnesses and disagreeables systematically through life. That was the man's weakness. Now if Dick had led him to suppose that Miles would do anything but take his conge philosophically and go, the Colonel would have filled the breach bristling with war. But from Dick's account of his previous relations with the impostor, he expected that Miles would be sent to the right-about with ease, and Colonel Bristo shrank from doing this personally.
The dining-room windows were wide open, but the brown holland blinds were drawn. Colonel Bristo did not raise them. He sat down to listen without looking. Almost immediately he heard a sharp click from the latch of the wicket-gate; then a louder click accompanied by a thud of timbers. Whoever had opened the gate had passed through and swung it to. The next sound that Colonel Bristo heard was the quiet, business-like voice of young Edmonstone:
'Stop! I have a word for you from the Colonel. Stop where you are! He does not want you to come in.'
'What do you mean? What has happened?' The tones were apathetic—those of a man who has heard his doom already, to whom nothing else can matter much.
'He simply does not want you inside his house again. He is sending your things down to the inn, where he hopes you will stay until you leave the place according to your plans. Ryan,' added Edmonstone in an altered manner, 'you understand me by this time? Then you may take my word for it that you are as safe as you were yesterday; though you don't deserve it. Only go at once.'
There was a pause. The Colonel fidgeted in his chair.
'So, my kind, generous, merciful friend could not keep his word one day longer!'
Miles's voice was so completely changed that the Colonel involuntarily grasped the blind-cord; for now it was the voice of an insolent, polished villain.
'If I had known before,' Dick answered him coolly, 'what I have found out this morning, you might have cried for quarter until you were hoarse.'
'May I ask what you have learnt this morning?'
'Your frauds on the man who befriended you.'
'My obligations to the man whose life I saved. Your way of putting it is prejudiced. Of course you gave him your version as to who I am?'
'My version!' exclaimed Edmonstone scornfully. 'I told him that you and the bushranger Sundown are one.'
Again Miles swiftly changed his key; but it was his words that were startling now.
'You are mad!' he said, pityingly—'you are mad; and I have known it for weeks. Your last words put your delusion in a nutshell. You have not a proof to bless yourself with. You are a madman on one point; and here comes the man that knows it as well as I do!'
In a whirl of surprise and amazement, not knowing for the moment whom or what to believe, the Colonel pulled up the blind and leant through the window. The Australian stood facing his accuser with an impudent smile of triumph. For once he stood revealed as he was—for once he looked every inch the finished scoundrel. If the Colonel had wavered for an instant before drawing up the blind, he wavered no more after the first glimpse of the Australian's face. He settled in his mind at that instant which was the liar of those two men. Yet something fascinated him. He was compelled to listen.
Robson was coming in at the gate.
'You are the very man we want,' laughed Miles, turning towards him. 'Now pull yourself together, Doctor. Do you call our friend, Mr. Edmonstone here, sane or not?'
'You said that he was not,' said Robson, looking from Edmonstone to Miles.
'And you agreed with me?'
'I said I thought——'
