Green Fancy

"I can't understand a decent chap like O'Dowd being mixed up in a rotten--"

"Ah, but you do not understand. He is a soldier of fortune, an adventurer. His heart is better than his reputation. It is the love of intrigue, the joy of turmoil that commands him. He has been mixed up, as you say, in any number of secret enterprises, both good and bad. His sister's children are the owners of Green Fancy. I know her well. It was through Mr. O'Dowd that I came to Green Fancy. Too late he realised that it was a mistake. He was deceived. He has known me for years and he would not have exposed me to----But come! As he has said, we are not yet out of the woods."

"I cannot, for the life of me, see why they took chances on inviting me to the house, Miss Cameron. They must have known that--"

"It was a desperate chance but it was carefully considered, you may be sure. They are clever, all of them. They were afraid of you. It was necessary to deal openly, boldly, with you if your suspicions were to be removed."

"But they must have known that you would appeal to me."

She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke it was with great intensity. "Mr. Barnes, I had your life in my hands all the time you were at Green Fancy. It was I who took the desperate chance. I shudder now when I think of what might have happened. Before you were asked to the house, I was coolly informed that you would not leave it alive if I so much as breathed a word to you concerning my unhappy plight. The first word of an appeal to you would have been the signal for--for your death. That is what they held over me. They made it very clear to me that nothing was to be gained by an appeal to you. You would die, and I would be no better off than before. It was I who took the chance. When I spoke to you on the couch that night, I--oh, don't you see? Don't you see that I wantonly, cruelly, selfishly risked YOUR life,--not my own,--when I--"

"There, there, now!" he cried, consolingly, as she put her hands to her face and gave way to sobs. "Don't let THAT worry you. I am here and alive, and so are you, and--for Heaven's sake don't do that! I--I simply go all to pieces when I hear a woman crying. I--"

"Forgive me," she murmured. "I didn't mean to be so silly."