“So, in the end, you lunched with Lucinda, after all?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, “I didn’t lunch with Lucinda, as it happened. When I took a step up to her, she seemed absolutely lost in her own thoughts, hardly aware of my being there, at least realizing that I was there with a sort of effort; her eyes didn’t look as if they saw me at all. ‘You must let me off to-day, Mr. Frost,’ she said in a hurried murmur. ‘I—I’ve got something to do—something I must think about.’ Her cheeks were still rather red; otherwise she was calm enough, but obviously entirely preoccupied. It would have been silly to press her; I mean, it would have been an intrusion. ‘All right, of course,’ I said. ‘But when are we to meet again, Donna Lucinda?’
“‘I don’t know. In a few days, I hope. Not till I send you word to the hotel.’
“‘Try to make it Sunday.’ I smiled as I added, ‘Then I shall see you in the blue frock; that’s the one I like best.’
“‘The blue frock!’ she repeated after me. Then she suddenly raised her free arm—she’d been holding that infernal bandbox all the time, you know—clenched her fist and gave it a little shake in the air. ‘If he’s really done that, I’ll have no more to do with him in this world again!’ she said. And off she went down the road, without another word to me or a glance back. I believe she’d forgotten my very existence.”
“Did she turn up on Sunday—in the blue frock?”
“I’ve never set eyes on her since—nor on Arsenio either. They both appear to have vanished into space—together or separately, Heaven only knows! I hunted for Valdez in all the likely places. I tried for her at the hotel at Cimiez, at her shop, at her lodgings. I’ve drawn blank everywhere. I got thoroughly sick and out of heart. So I thought I’d run up here and see what you thought about it.”
“I don’t know why I should make any mystery about it,” said I. “Anything that puzzles you will be quite plain in the light of that letter.”