him he had loved her enough to marry her and therefore he need not compare her with another. He had not married her by his own initiative; she had married him, and taken him as it were unaware, where he could not help himself.
The cold flamed into her face and then receded, leaving it deathly white and making the redness of her lips but the more startling!
Then when they went on deck, almost the first person he sighted was a man from whom he had borrowed largely but a few days before on the strength of his marriage into the Catherwood fortune.
Without explanation he dashed around a group of deck chairs, upsetting one in his haste, colliding with a man, and swinging around to the other side of the ship without any seeming reason at all.
Arla followed him breathlessly, trying not to appear to be running a race. She was nonplussed. What was the matter with Carter? She had never seen him act in such a crazy way.
When she at last came to a stop, panting at the secluded hiding place that he had selected, she watched him in dismay. His face was actually lowering.
“What in the world is the matter with you, Carter?” she asked, almost tenderly. She began to think perhaps all that had happened yesterday had unsettled his mind.
“Everything in the world is the matter with me!” he said in a harsh tone. “Everything terrible that could happen to a man in any position!”
Arla studied him, still with that troubled look in her eyes, knowing that he would presently explain himself. She had not been his secretary for some months without knowing his habits.
“That was Mr. Sheldon that we passed as we came up the companionway. Didn’t you recognize him?” He turned and glared at her as if she were responsible for Mr. Sheldon being on board.
“Sheldon? What Sheldon?” asked Arla in a pleasant tone. “I don’t know any Mr. Sheldon, do I?”
“No!” said Carter. “You don’t know him, socially of course, but it’s not many hours since you witnessed his signature on some papers in the office!”
He paused impressively.
Arla looked puzzled and waited again, but Carter was still trying to impress her. At such time he could take on a fairly ponderous look, though he was not a large man, by merely swelling up proudly and looking down at her.
“Well, what of it?” asked Arla half impatiently after she had waited a reasonable time for explanation.
“What of it? And you can say what of it! You who wrote out those papers for him to sign, you who heard the whole conversation and know that it was on the strength of my expectation of being able to raise a large sum in the near future that he loaned me the money I needed to finance—” He stopped abruptly, conscious that this very wedding trip was a part of the business he had to finance, the ring that sparkled on her finger, the pearls she had worn to the altar. He couldn’t quite tell her that! Even in his present state of mind, he couldn’t be as raw as that.
“Well—?” she said again almost haughtily, watching him narrowly. His whole attitude toward her, his very tone had become offensive.
“Well? No, there is nothing well about it!” he snapped. “That man is a friend of the Catherwoods. He knows the Catherwood lawyer intimately. And he knows Sher—he knows Miss Cameron by sight. I have been with her when we met him. Don’t you realize—? You can’t be so blind as not to know that it would be nothing short of disastrous for him to know what has happened! Why, it’s even conceivable that he might stop payment on that check now. He could radio a message to his bank, you know. And then I’d be in a worse hole than I’m in already. You know as well as I do.”
“Well, but he couldn’t possibly know what had happened from merely meeting us together on deck!” said Arla haughtily.
“Couldn’t he? You don’t think he’s sharp enough? Well, let me tell you he’s keen. How long do you think it would take him to cancel his agreement if he discovers that instead of marrying an heiress I am tied to a penniless secretary?”
The words cut to the quick! Arla caught her breath and set her lovely teeth sharply in her red underlip, trembling with humiliation and anger.
He cast a furtive glance at her and grew only the more hateful, realizing perhaps