“Then,” observed Deane with a slight smile, “if the General and Miss Bellairs leave us you can take my wife about.”
“I should think you might take her yourself,” and he gently kicked Deane. He was afraid of arousing the General’s dormant suspicions.
It was late at night when they arrived in Paris, but the faithful Laing was on the platform to meet them, and received them with a warm greeting. While the luggage was being collected by Deane’s man, they stood and talked on the platform. Presently the General, struck by a sudden thought, asked:
“I suppose nothing came for us at Cannes, oh, Laing? You said you’d bring anything on, you know.”
Laing interrupted a pretty speech which he was trying to direct into Dora’s inattentive ears.
“Beg pardon, General?”
“No letters for any of us before you left Cannes?”
“No, Gen—” he began, but suddenly stopped. His mouth remained open and his glass fell from his eye.
The General, not waiting to hear more than the first word, had rushed of to hail a cab and Deane was escorting his wife. Dora and Charlie stood waiting for the unfinished speech.
The end came slowly and with a prodigious emphasis of despair.