"Hello, old man!" said Terry and I fancied that his tone was not entirely cordial. "Just sit down and listen to this.
We've been having some interesting disclosures."
Polly raised her head and cast him a reproachful glance, while with a limp wave of the hand she indicated a chair.
I settled myself and inquired reassuringly, "Well, Polly, what's the trouble?"
"You tell him," said Polly to Terry, as she settled herself to cry again.
"I'll tell you," said Terry, glancing warily at me, "but it's a secret, remember.
You mustn't let any of those horrid newspaper men get hold of it.
Miss Mathers would hate awfully to have anything like this get into the papers."
"Oh, go on, Terry," said I, crossly, "if you've got anything to tell, for heaven's sake tell it!"
"Well, as far as we'd got when you interrupted, was that that afternoon in the cave she and Radnor had somehow got separated from the rest of the party and gone on ahead.
They sat down to wait for the others on the fallen column, and while they were waiting Radnor asked her to marry him, for the seventh—or was it the eighth time?"
"The seventh, I think," said Polly.
"It's happened so often that, she's sort of lost track; but anyway, she replied by asking him if he knew the truth about the ghost.
He said, yes, he did, but he couldn't tell her; it was somebody else's secret.
On his word of honor though there was nothing that he was to blame for.
She said she wouldn't marry a man who had secrets.
He said that unless she took him now, she would never have the chance again; it was the last time he was going to ask her—is that straight, Miss Mathers?"
"Y-yes," sobbed Polly from the depths of her cushion.
Terry proceeded with a fast broadening smile; it was evident that he enjoyed the recital.
"And then being naturally angry that any man should presume to propose for the last time, she proceeded to be 'perfectly horrid' to him.—Go on, Miss Mathers.
That's as far as you'd got."
"I—I told him—you won't tell anyone?"
"No."
"I told him I'd decided to marry Jim Mattison."
"Ah—" said Terry. "Now we're getting at it!
If you don't mind my asking, Miss Mathers, was that just a bluff on your part, or had Mr. Mattison really asked you?"
Polly sat up and eyed him with a sparkle of resentment.
"Certainly, he'd asked me—a dozen times."
"I beg pardon!" murmured Terry. "So now you're engaged to Mr. Mattison?"
"Oh, no!" cried Polly. "Jim doesn't know I said it—I didn't mean it; I just wanted to make Radnor mad."
"I see!
So it was a bluff after all?
Were you successful in making him mad?"
She nodded dismally.
"What did he say?"
"Oh, he was awfully angry!
He said that if he never amounted to anything it would be my fault."
"And then what?"
"We heard the others coming and he started off.
I called after him and asked him where he was going, and he said he was going to the d—devil."
Polly began to cry again, and Terry chuckled slightly.
"As a good many other young men have said under similar circumstances.
But where he did go, was to the hotel; and there, it appears, he drank two glasses of brandy and swore at the stable boy.—Is that all, Miss Mathers?"
"Yes; it's the last time I ever saw him and he thinks I'm engaged to Jim Mattison."
"See here, Polly," said I with some excusable heat, "now why in thunder didn't you tell me all this before?"
"You didn't ask me."
"She was afraid that it would get into the papers," said Terry, soothingly. "It would be a terrible scandal to have anything like that get out.
The fact that Radnor Gaylord was likely to be hanged for a murder he never committed, was in comparison a minor affair."
Polly turned upon him with a flash of gray eyes.
"I was going to tell before the trial.