"Have you noticed that the Marchese hasn't asked us a single question about your château?" she remarked. "He is a changed man since we came into this valley. I wonder if there was ever anything between him and that tragic-looking girl up there? Perhaps Sir Roger knows, and that's the reason he didn't speak of her."
"Perhaps," echoed Virginia listlessly, and Kate Gardiner said no more.
An odd restraint seemed to have settled on the whole party, which had started out so gaily in the sunshine. Each one was sunk deep in his or her own thoughts, as if the twilight had touched them with its delicate melancholy.
They were stopping at the Cap Martin hotel, high on the hill in its beautiful garden, and among its pines; and there was a dance that night, for which Virginia had promised Loria several waltzes; but she complained that the ride had tired her.
Instead of dancing she went after dinner to the private sitting-room which she and Lady Gardiner shared, having quietly asked Roger Broom if he would come to her there for a few minutes. He found her, not in the room, but on the balcony, in floods of moonlight, which gave her beauty an unearthly charm as she lay on a chaise longue, wrapped in an evening cloak of white and silver brocade.
"You don't mind leaving the dance a little while—for me?" she asked.
Roger smiled his quiet, pleasant smile. "There's nothing in the world I would mind leaving for you, Virginia," he said, "and I think you know that very well."
"Sometimes I believe it's true. I should like to believe it to-night," she answered, "because I need your help. There's a secret, and I must find it out."
As the girl spoke there was a slight sound in the room beyond the big, open window.
"What's that?" exclaimed Roger. "Who is there?"