But Miss Whipple cut him short, very curtly, whilst the blood mounted curiously over her throat and painted her cheeks pink.
“Bryce Carter has crashed.”
Mr. Ricardo was shocked and disappointed.
“In an aeroplane? I hadn’t heard of it. I am so sorry. Crashed? Dear me!”
“I mean,” said Joyce patiently, “that Diana has broken off the engagement. That’s another reason why I think something ought to be done about it. She was very much in love with him and it all went in a week or two—she gave him no reason. So he’s barred out, isn’t he? I feel that I can’t really stand aside … not, of course, that I have anything to do with it. …” Joyce Whipple was rapidly becoming incoherent, whilst the colour now flamed in her cheeks. “So unless you can help—”
But Mr. Ricardo felt that his position was more delicate than ever. He was not at all attracted by his companion’s confusion; and since the hoped-for avenue of escape was closed for him, he cast desperately about for another, and found it.
“I have got it,” he said, shaking a finger at her triumphantly.
“What have you got?” Joyce asked warily.
“The only possible solution of the problem.”
He was most emphatic about it. There was to be no discussion at all. His arrangement must just go through.
“You are the one person indicated to put the trouble right,” he declared. “You are Diana’s friend. You know all her other friends. You can propose yourself for her party at the Château Suvlac. You have influence with her. If there is anyone—dangerous—wasn’t that the word you used?—no one is so likely as you to discover who it is—yes.”
He looked her over. There was a vividness about her, a suggestion of courage and independence which went very well with the straight, slim figure and the delicate tidiness of her appearance. She seemed purposeful. This was the age of young women. By all means let one of them, radiant as Joyce Whipple, blow the trumpet and have the intense satisfaction of seeing the walls of this new Jericho collapse. He himself would look on without one pang of envy from the house of the nobleman with the resonant name, the Vicomte Cassandre de Mirandol.
“You! Of course, you!” he exclaimed admiringly.
Suddenly the positions were reversed. So great a discomfort was visible in Joyce Whipple’s movements and in her face that Mr. Ricardo was astonished. He had chanced upon a quite unexpected flaw in her armour. It was she who now must walk delicately.
“No doubt,” she admitted with a great deal of embarrassment. “Yes, and I have been asked to Suvlac … and I shall go if I can. But I don’t think that I can.” She broke out passionately: “I wish with all my heart that I could! But I shall probably be out of reach. Indeed it is almost certain that I shall have to go back to America. That’s why I said that it was of no use to write to me, and why I wanted to unload the whole problem upon you. You see,” she looked at Mr. Ricardo shyly and quickly looked away again. “You see, Cinderellas must be off the premises by midnight,” and with a hurried glance at the clock, “and it’s almost midnight now.”
She rose quickly as she spoke and with a smile and a pleasant word, she joined a small cluster of young people by the flower-banked grate. These had obviously been waiting for her, for they wished their hostess good night and immediately went away.
Mr. Ricardo certainly had the satisfaction of knowing that he had not committed himself to Joyce Whipple’s purposes. But the satisfaction was not very real. The odd story which she had told him was just the sort of story which appealed to him; for he had a curious passion for the bizarre. And even then he was less intrigued by the narrative than by the narrator. He tried indeed to fix his mind upon the problem of Diana Tasborough. But the problem of Joyce Whipple popped up instead. Almost before he realised his untimely behaviour, he had got her dressed up like some wilful beauty of the Second Empire. There she was, sitting in front of him, as he drove back to his house in Grosvenor Square, her white shoulders rising entrancingly out of one of those round, escalloped gowns which kept up heaven knows how, and spread in voluminous folds about her feet. Yet even so, with her thus attired before his eyes, as it were, he began to doubt, to wonder whether he was not growing a trifle old-fashioned and prejudiced. For after all, could Joyce Whipple, with her straight, slender limbs, her wrists and hands and feet and ankles as fragile seemingly as glass, have looked more lovely in any age than she had looked in the short shimmering frock which she had worn that night? Her voice certainly supported the argument that her proper period was the Second Empire. For instead of the brisk high notes to which he was accustomed, it was soft and low and melodious and had a curiously wistful little drawl which it needed great strength of character to resist. There were, however, other points which affected him less pleasantly. Why had his two suggestions thrown her into so manifest a confusion? What had she to do with Bryce Carter that she must blush so furiously over the rupture of his engagement to Diana Tasborough? And—“Bless my soul,” he cried, in the solitude of his limousine, “what was
