Eve was glad when Mrs. Montford gave the signal for a move to the drawing-room. The men stayed behind to smoke, all but Sefton, who followed the ladies, a proceeding which Sophy ascribed to his interest in her conversation. At the luncheon-table Eve had been all talk and gaiety, deceiving everyone except the man who watched her face in its occasional moments of repose. In the drawing-room she abandoned all effort, sank into a chair near the window, evidently sick at heart, glancing first at the clock on the chimneypiece and then at the street to see if her carriage were approaching. She had ordered it for a quarter past three. She started up the instant it was announced, and went over to Mrs. Montford to make her adieux, that lady being deep in a murmured discussion of the latest Mayfair scandal with a brace of matrons, while Sophy was being taken round the rooms by Sefton, to look at the pictures and curios.
“You needn’t have been in such an absurd hurry to come away,” remonstrated this young lady in a lugubrious tone, as they drove homeward. “Nobody else was moving.”
“They will be gone in a quarter of an hour. Only the bores ever linger after a London luncheon. Everybody has something to do.”
“We have nothing to do till five o’clock; unless you go to Lady Thornton’s at home before five. The card says four till seven.”
“Then we can go at six. That will be quite early enough.”
“And what are we to do in the interval? It isn’t half-past three yet.”
“Rest, Sophy; sleep if you can. We are going to a theatre tonight, and a dance afterwards.”
“It is so near the end of the season,” sighed Sophy. “People are all rushing off to Germany for their cures. One feels quite out of it when one has no complaint to talk about.”
Vansittart was at home. Eve went straight to his den, sure to find him there, smoking over a book or a newspaper.
He looked up at her smilingly, but she thought he looked weary and worn out, and when the smile was gone there was a troubled expression.
“Was it a lively luncheon, Eve?” he asked, giving her his hand as she took up her favourite position behind his high-backed chair.
It was a colossal chair, with cushioned arms, upon one of which she sometimes seated herself, liking to nestle against him, yet not so loquacious as to interrupt his reading; sometimes reading with him; dipping into some French novel which he read from sheer idleness, not because he had any taste for the thinly beaten gold-leaf of Maupassant or Bourget.
Today she stood behind his chair, silent, meditative, while he read and smoked.
“Was it pleasant—your party?” he asked presently, repeating the question she had left unanswered.
“Oh, it was pleasant enough. Sophy will tell you that it was delightful. I leave her to expatiate upon the people and the dishes and the talk. I was not in a very pleasant mood. There is a letter for you on the mantelpiece. You have not seen it, perhaps?”
“No,” he said, startled by the angry agitation in her tone. “Is there anything particular about the letter?”
He put down his pipe and stood up, looking at her inquiringly. She was very pale, always with the exception of that hectic spot which Sefton had noticed, and which burned more fiercely now.
He stretched out his hand to take the letter, half hidden by a little bronze Buddha with malevolent onyx eyes.
He recognized Lisa’s unformed scrawl at the first glance.
“What is the matter with the letter?” he asked coldly.
“She brought it here herself, Jack—that Italian woman—Signora Vivanti. I was coming downstairs while she was at the door. I saw her give the letter to James. What can she have to write to you about? Why should she bring the letter with her own hand? How could she dare come to the house where your wife lives?” She flamed up at the last question, and her voice trembled at the word wife.
“I don’t see why my wife’s presence should alarm her, if she had need of immediate help from me.”
“What should she want? Why should she come to you for help? Because you helped her once, in Italy, when she was poor and friendless? Is that a reason why she should pester you now?”
“If you will let me read her letter I may be able to tell you,” he answered gravely.
It was a long letter, for in writing to the man she adored, Lisa let her pen run away with her. Nothing would ever induce her to marry Sefton, she told him; her heart was given to another; he knew who that other was, and that she could never change. Then came the warning of his danger. Sefton’s savage hatred. It was a letter he could under no circumstances show to his wife. And there she stood waiting for the letter to be shown her, raging with jealousy, the love which had made her so angelic in her self-abnegation now transformed into a fire that made her almost diabolical.
“Well! May I see her letter?”
“No, Eve. The letter is confidential. She asks nothing from me—except perhaps approval of the course she has taken. She has had an offer of marriage—an offer that most young women in her position would accept without a second thought.”
“And she has refused?” cried Eve, breathlessly.
“She has refused.”
“Because she loves someone else—someone who can’t marry her—but who can carry on an intrigue with her—an old intrigue—begun years ago. Someone whom she is trying to get into her net again. The net is
