“It’s strange, Miss Mather. Someone has been at your things while I was down in the servants’ hall at luncheon.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, Miss Mather, sure. Quite positive, in fact. Those waists were lying flat when I left.”
“The window wasn’t open?” asked Doris with a glance around.
“Oh, no, Miss.” She looked about and lowered her voice. “It’s somebody inside.”
“Curious,” said Doris thoughtfully. “Nothing has been taken? Is the jewel box there?”
Together they examined the things and found that nothing was missing.
“Say nothing about this, Wilson,” said Doris thoughtfully. “Unless something is taken, I shouldn’t care to disturb Lady Heathcote.”
“It can’t be–” Wilson paused, her voice hushed.
“The papers are safe, Wilson—as long as I am safe,” replied the girl, and told the maid of her place of concealment.
Wilson looked dubious. “I wish you’d give them to me, Miss Mather.”
But the girl shook her head—she was thoroughly alive now to the perils which hung about her, here within the very doors of Lady Heathcote’s house, but she had determined that if she could not find it possible to keep the papers until Cyril appeared she would destroy them. She was not frightened, for however clumsy John Rizzio’s agents might be she was in no danger from himself. Whatever the interests which made the possession of the yellow packet so vital, she knew the man well enough to be sure that if there came an issue between them, he would act with her as he had always acted—the part of a gentleman.
Instead of apprehension at his approaching visit she now felt only interest and a kind of suppressed exhilaration as at the prospect of a flight in a new plane or the trying out of a green hunter—excitement like that which preceded all her sportive ventures.
So that when she met John Rizzio in the drawing-room after dinner—he had not been able to manage a more opportune train—she gave him a warm hand-clasp of greeting and a smile which caused him some surprise and not a little regret—surprise that she was carrying off a difficult situation with consummate ease; regret that such self-possession and artistry were not to be added to the ornaments of his house in Berkeley Square. Perhaps still–
“How agreeable,” she was saying charmingly. “The great man actually condescends to come to the land of Calvin, oatcake and sulphur, when there are truffles and old Madeira still to be had in London.”
He laughed, his dark eyes appraising her slender blond beauty eagerly.
“I have no quarrel with Calvin. Oatcake—by all means. Sulphur—er—I suppose the sulphur will come in time.”
“Not if you’re polite,” said the girl coolly, “and tell me what brought you so unexpectedly to Scotland.”
They were standing near the fire apart from the others, Doris with one slipper on the fender, which she was regarding approvingly, her head upon one side. He admired her careless tone. She was quite wonderful.
“Perhaps you will not believe me,” he said suavely, “if I were to tell you that I came to see you.”
“Me? I am flattered. I thought that great collectors were always deterred by fear of the spurious.”
She was carrying the war into his camp. He met the issue squarely. “They are only deterred by the spurious. Therefore I am here. The inference is obvious.”
He had always showed the slightest trace of his foreign accent. It went admirably with his shrug and mobile fingers.
“I am genuine in this,” she laughed, “that however much you know about pictures, about objets de vertu—women must remain for you and for all other men an unknown quantity.”
“Not when they are both,” he said gallantly.
“There are good and bad pictures—objects of virtue, excessively ugly–”
“Objects of virtue are usually excessively ugly, especially if they are women.”
“Thanks,” said Doris. “You’re most flattering. There’s something in the air of Scotland that makes one tell the truth.”
He laughed. “If Scotland is as merciless as that, I shall be off in the morning. I could imagine no worse purgatory than a place in which one always tells the truth. Lying is one of the highest arts of a mature civilization. I haven’t the slightest notion, nor have you, that either of us means a thing he says. We were all born to deceive—some of us do it in one way, some in another, but we all do it to the very best of our bent. For instance, you said a while ago that it was agreeable for you to see me. But I’m quite sure, you know, that it wasn’t.”
“It isn’t agreeable if you’re going to be horrid and cynical. Why shouldn’t I be glad to see you? You always stimulate my intelligence even if you don’t flatter it.”
The others had moved on to the library and they had the room to themselves.
“I don’t see how I could flatter it more than I have already done,” he said in a low tone of voice.
She raised her chin a trifle and peered at him slantwise.
“Do you think that you flatter it now when you recall the mistakes of my past?”
He searched her face keenly but her blue eyes met his gaze steadily. She was smiling up at him guilelessly.
“A mistake—of course,” he said slowly. “You are young enough to afford to make mistakes. But I am old enough to wish that it hadn’t been made at my expense.”
“You still care?” she asked.
“I do.”
“If I hadn’t thought that you wanted me for your collection–”
“You are cruel–”
“No. I know. You wanted me for your portrait harem, and I should have been frightfully jealous of the Coningsby Venus. I couldn’t compete with that sort of thing, you know.”
He smiled at her admiringly and went on in a low tone.
“You know why I wanted you then, and why I want you now—because you’re the cleverest woman in England, and the most courageous.”
“It took courage to refuse the hand of John Rizzio.”
“It takes more courage in John Rizzio to hear those words from the lips that refused him.”
She laid her hand gently on his arm.
“I am sorry,” she said.
He bent his head and kissed her fingers.
“It is not the Coningsby Venus who is essential to my happiness,” he whispered. “It’s the Doris Diana.”
She laughed.
“That’s the disillusionment of possession.”
“No. The only disillusionments of life are its failures—I got the Venus by infinite patience. The Diana–” He paused and drew in his breath.
“You think that you may get the Diana by patience also?” she asked quietly.
He looked at her with a gaze that seemed to pierce all her subterfuges.
“I waited for the Coningsby Venus,” he said in measured tones, “until the man who possessed her—was dead.”
She started, and the color left her cheeks.
“You mean—Cyril?” she stammered.
“I mean,” he replied urbanely, “precisely nothing—except that I will never give you up.”
She recovered her poise with an effort, and when she replied she was smiling gayly.
“I’m not at all