A small interruption brought him in a moment or two to so abrupt a stop that all eyes were turned on the interrupters. Mrs. Devenish was the cause of the interruption. She had been taking no part in any of the conversation, beyond answering at random when she was addressed, and sat occupied by some secret thought of her own. But once she shivered, and so violently that the little bubbling cry which people will utter involuntarily when they are freezing broke from her lips. The sound recalled her to her environment, and she glanced guiltily across the table. Her eyes encountered Joyce Whipple’s, and Joyce suddenly exclaimed in a queer, sharp, high-pitched voice:
“It’s no use blaming me, Evelyn. It’s not I who dispense the cold,” and then she caught herself up too late, her face flushed scarlet, and in her turn she looked quickly from neighbour to neighbour. This was the first sign which Mr. Ricardo got, that under the smooth flow of talk nerves were strained to the loss of self-control by secret preoccupations. The Abbé Fauriel was even quicker than Mr. Ricardo to notice it. His eyes darted swiftly to Evelyn Devenish, and from her to Joyce Whipple. His face, in spite of the long, drooping nose and the thick jaw, became alert and birdlike.
“So, mademoiselle,” he said slowly to Joyce, “it is not you who dispense the cold. Who, then?”
He did not insist upon an answer, but a moment or two later, when, as if to cover Joyce Whipple’s confusion, the chatter in her neighbourhood broke out afresh, Mr. Ricardo noticed that almost imperceptibly he made the sign of the Cross upon his breast.
So far Mr. Ricardo was little more than curious and excited. But a quarter of an hour afterwards he caught a momentary glimpse of passion which shook him from its sheer ferocity. The men had retired from the dinner-table with the ladies, in the French fashion, and had split up into little groups. Joyce Whipple was sitting in a low chair at the side of the hearth, her knees crossed and one slender foot in its silver slipper swinging restlessly, whilst on a couch at her elbow Robin Webster was talking to her in a low voice and with an attention so complete as to make it clear that there was no one else in the room for him at that moment. The Vicomte de Mirandol was chatting with Mrs. Tasborough and the Abbé. Evelyn Devenish stood near the window in a group with Diana and the two young Frenchmen. Suddenly from that group sprang a phrase which was heard all over the room.
“The Cave of the Mummies.”
It was one of the Frenchmen who uttered it, but Evelyn Devenish took it up. The Cave of the Mummies is a famous showplace of Bordeaux. Under the soaring tower of St. Michel in the open square in front of the church there is an underground cavern where bodies, mummified by some rare quality of the earth in which they were originally buried, stand mounted in a row upon iron rests for all the world to see at a price of a few pence.
“It is a scandal,” cried the Abbé. “Those poor people should be put decently away. It is a nightmare, that cavern, with that old woman showing off the points of her exhibits by the light of a candle!” He shrugged his shoulders with disgust and looked at Joyce Whipple. “Now I, too, mademoiselle—yes, now I too feel the cold.”
Evelyn Devenish laughed.
“Yet we all go to that spectacle, Monsieur l’Abbé. I plead guilty. I was there eight or nine days ago. It was there too, I think, that Mr. Ricardo saw me.”
She challenged that unhappy gentleman with a smile of amusement, to deny the charge. But, alas, he could not. A taste for the bizarre was always at odds with his respectability.
“It is true,” he said lamely, shifting his weight from one foot on to the other. “I had heard so much of it—I had so often passed through Bordeaux without seeing it. But now that I have seen it, I take my stand with Monsieur l’Abbé.” He recovered his assurance and felt as virtuous as he now looked. “Yes, a dreadful exhibition; it should be closed.”
Evelyn Devenish laughed again, quizzing him. “A most unpleasant young woman,” said Mr. Ricardo to himself, “bold and without respect.” He was relieved when she averted her eyes from him. But he observed that they travelled slowly round until they reached Joyce Whipple, and there for a moment they stayed, half hidden by the eyelids; but not hidden enough to conceal the hatred which grew slowly from a spark in the depths to a blaze of devouring fire. Mr. Ricardo had never seen in his life the evidence of a passion so raw. It was covetous to punish and hurt. The dark eyes could not leave, it seemed, the girl radiant in her silvery frock. They rested with a dreadful smile upon the foot swinging in its gleaming slipper and ran up the slim leg in its silken sheath to the bent knee. Mr. Ricardo understood by a flash of insight the cruel thought behind the eyes and the smile. “Oh, certainly, it would have to be to tea and not to supper,” he said to himself, almost in an agony as he thought of that imaginary meal alone with Evelyn Devenish which his fears had conjured up.
Diana Tasborough crossed the room to him.
“You will play whist, with my aunt and the Abbé and de Mirandol, won’t you?” she pleaded. “It must be whist, for the Abbé has never played bridge”; and plaguing his brains to recollect how the game of whist was played, he was led to the card-table.
So far, then, Mr. Ricardo had undoubtedly earned some good marks, not so much for putting two and two together as for
