"I have eaten," she said. "One does not dine after a day's travelling."
"Won't you have some coffee?"
She consented to the coffee, which Alexis John Smedley duly brought in, and presently she was walking lightly to and fro, holding the tiny white cup in her white hand, and peering at the furniture and bric-a-brac by the light of several candles. Between whiles she related to Alresca all the news of their operatic acquaintances—how this one was married, another stranded in Buenos Ayres, another ill with jealousy, another ill with a cold, another pursued for debt, and so on through the diverting category.
"And Smart?" Alresca queried at length.
I had been expecting and hoping for this question.
"Oh, Sir Cyril! I have heard nothing of him. He is not a person that interests me."
She shut her lips tight and looked suddenly across in my direction, and our eyes met, but she made no sign that I could interpret. If she had known that the little jewelled dagger lay in the room over her head!
Her straw hat and thin white veil lay on a settee between two windows. She picked them up, and began to pull the pins out of the hat. Then she put the hat down again.
"I must run away soon, Alresca," she said, bending over him, "but before I leave I should like to go through the whole house. It seems such a quaint place. Will you let Mr. Foster show me? He shall not be away from you long."
"In the dark?"