“Oh, listen to me—­just a word—­don’t turn away like that.  Don’t go—­ don’t leave me, so—­stay one moment.  On my honor—­”

“Oh, on your honor!”

“On my honor I am what I say!  And I will prove it, and you will believe, I know you will.  I will bring you a message—­a cablegram—­”

“When?”

“To-morrow—­next day—­”

“Signed ’Rossmore’?”

“Yes—­signed Rossmore.”

“What will that prove?”

“What will it prove?  What should it prove?”

“If you force me to say it—­possibly the presence of a confederate somewhere.”

This was a hard blow, and staggered him.  He said, dejectedly: 

“It is true.  I did not think of it.  Oh, my God, I do not know any way to do; I do everything wrong.  You are going?—­and you won’t say even good-night—­or good-bye?  Ah, we have not parted like this before.”

“Oh, I want to run and—­no, go, now.”  A pause—­then she said, “You may bring the message when it comes.”

“Oh, may I?  God bless you.”

He was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already quivering, and now she broke down.  Through her sobbings her words broke from time to time.

“Oh, he is gone.  I have lost him, I shall never see him any more.  And he didn’t kiss me good-bye; never even offered to force a kiss from me, and he knowing it was the very, very last, and I expecting he would, and never dreaming he would treat me so after all we have been to each other.  Oh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do!  He is a dear, poor, miserable, good-hearted, transparent liar and humbug, but oh, I do love him so—!” After a little she broke into speech again.  “How dear he is! and I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so!  Why won’t he ever think to forge a message and fetch it?—­but no, he never will, he never thinks of anything; he’s so honest and simple it wouldn’t ever occur to him.  Oh, what did possess him to think he could succeed as a fraud—­and he hasn’t the first requisite except duplicity that I can see.  Oh, dear, I’ll go to bed and give it all up.  Oh, I wish I had told him to come and tell me whenever he didn’t get any telegram—­and now it’s all my own fault if I never see him again.  How my eyes must look!”

CHAPTER XXIV.

Next day, sure enough, the cablegram didn’t come.  This was an immense disaster; for Tracy couldn’t go into the presence without that ticket, although it wasn’t going to possess any value as evidence.  But if the failure of the cablegram on that first day may be called an immense disaster, where is the dictionary that can turn out a phrase sizeable enough to describe the tenth day’s failure?  Of course every day that the cablegram didn’t come made Tracy all of twenty-four hours’ more ashamed of himself than he was the day before, and made Sally fully twenty-four hours more certain than ever that he not only hadn’t any father anywhere, but hadn’t even a confederate—­and so it followed that he was a double-dyed humbug and couldn’t be otherwise.