Carpentaria shuffled his feet in an agony of uncertainty.
“Come in if you doubt me,” Juliette continued. “But if you do, it will be the end.”
Carpentaria turned slowly away, and passed down the corridor.
“Of course I don’t doubt you,” he called out.
Juliette made no response. She waited till her half-brother had descended the stairs, then she shut the door quietly, and ran to the Louis Quinze sofa, with its gilded borders, that stood a little way from the window.
“You can come out,” she whispered.
And from behind the sofa emerged the bulky form of Josephus Ilam.
“Great heavens!” he muttered, searching in his pocket for a handkerchief.
Juliette sat down on a chair and burst into tears. The contrast between their two handkerchiefs—Ham’s enormous, like himself, and Juliette’s a fragment of lace no larger than a piece of bread-and-butter—was one of those trifles which put an edge of the comical on the tragic stuff of life.
“You are an astounding woman!” exclaimed Ilam, wiping his brow.