He
answered the direct question by a direct statement, as if he were too
tired to dissemble:
"After the swag."
The word was strange to her. The veiled ardour of her grey gaze from
under the dark eyebrows never left Ricardo's.
"A swag?" she murmured quietly. "What's that?"
"Why, swag, plunder--what your gentleman has been pinching right and
left for years--the pieces. Don't you know? This!"
Without looking up, he made the motion of counting money into the
palm of his hand. She lowered her eyes slightly to observe this bit
of pantomime, but returned them to his face at once. Then, in a mere
breath:
"How do you know anything about him?" she asked, concealing her puzzled
alarm. "What has it got to do with you?"
"Everything," was Ricardo's concise answer, in a low, emphatic whisper.
He reflected that this girl was really his best hope. Out of the unfaded
impression of past violence there was growing the sort of sentiment
which prevents a man from being indifferent to a woman he has once held
in his arms--if even against her will--and still more so if she has
pardoned the outrage. It becomes then a sort of bond. He felt positively
the need to confide in her--a subtle trait of masculinity, this almost
physical need of trust which can exist side by side with the most brutal
readiness of suspicion.
"It's a game of grab--see?" he went on, with a new inflection of
intimacy in his murmur.
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