“I wish to God you had,” said Geoffrey.

McVay shook his head faintly in deprecation of such violence, but otherwise preferred to pass the remark by, and they soon set to work heating soup and smoked beef.  When all was ready and spread in the dining-room—­this was McVay’s suggestion; he said food was unappetising unless it were nicely served—­Geoffrey said: 

“Go and see if your sister is awake, and if she is,” he added firmly, “I’ll give you a few minutes alone with her, so that you can explain the situation fully.”

McVay nodded and slipped into the library.  Geoffrey shut the door behind him, and sat down on a bench in the hall from which he could command both doors.

If he entertained the doubts of her innocence which he continually told himself no sane man could help entertaining, he found himself strangely nervous.  He felt as if he were waiting outside an operating room.  He thought of her as he had seen her asleep, of the curve of her eye-lashes on her cheek, of her raising those lashes, awaking to be met with McVay’s revelations.  Even if she were guilty, Geoffrey found it in his heart to pity her waking to learn that her brother was a prisoner.  How unfortunate, too, would be her own position,—­the guest, if only for a few hours, of a man who was concerned only to lodge her brother in jail.

His heart gave a distinct thump when the library door opened and they came out together.  His eyes turned to her face at once, and found it unperturbed.  Didn’t she care, or had she always known?

McVay caught his arm when she had passed them by, and whispered glibly: 

“Thought it was better to wait until she had had something to eat—­shock on an empty stomach, so bad—­so hard to bear.”

Geoffrey shook his arm free.  “You infernal coward,” he whispered back.

“Well, I like that,” retorted McVay, “you didn’t tell her yourself when you had the chance.”

“It wasn’t my affair.  I did not tell her because—­”

“Oh, I know,” McVay interrupted with a chuckle.  “I’ve been knowing why for the last ten minutes.”

They followed her into the dining-room.

It was not a sumptuous repast to which they sat down, but Geoffrey asked nothing better.  He was sitting opposite to her,—­a position evidently decreed him by Fate from the beginning of time.  He could look at her, and now and then, in spite of her delicious reluctance, could force her to meet his eyes.  When this happened, nothing was ever more apparent than that, for both of them, a momentous event had occurred.

She was almost completely silent, and as for him, his responses to the general conversation which McVay kept attempting to set up, were so entirely mechanical that he was scarcely aware of them himself.

It was she who suddenly remembered that it was Christmas day.

“And this is our Christmas dinner,” observed McVay regretfully.