She knew, then, that he had had a diamond of remarkable size; that he had lost it in a small, easily-searched area. She had not picked it up, and she had been careful—too careful, I thought—to avoid all possible suspicion of having done so.
Did she know where it was?
These were the thoughts that ran through my mind while the Marquis flirted with the lady, leaving me to talk to the uninteresting elderly companion in the background.
I think he began to feel sorry, before very long, that he had asked me to accompany him to Daisie’s; for the little lady seemed in a fascinating mood, and looked as though she would not have been sorry to have the drawing-room and the piano left to herself and her friend. Doubtless, even the Marquis’ self-possession shrank from picking out sentimental-sounding bits of hymns and reading or singing them in her company before a couple of more or less unsympathetic observers. Mrs. Daisie gave me a look or two that were certainly meant to be taken as hints, but I was astonishingly stupid that afternoon and could not understand her. Even when the Marquis proposed going out to the little back garden to look at Mrs. Vandaleur’s plants, I was so stupid that I couldn’t see they did not want me, and I got up to go too, protesting that there was nothing in the world interested me so much as the selection and care of roses in the tropics.
“I never knew you were an amateur of the garden,” observed the Marquis somewhat ruefully. “You are then interested in culture? Don’t put out yourself to please us, my friend, if you would rather love to stay in the house.”
“It doesn’t put me out worth twopence,” I assured him. We went out through the sun and the wind, to the back of the house, a rather gloomy party of four, all trying more or less to be cheerful. I fancy I succeeded the best. Mrs. Daisie made great play with the care of her black draperies in the storm, yet found time to glance at me, I thought, unpleasantly, and the Marquis was pulling his mustache. But I was determinedly stupid.
The two got away in a corner of the garden before long, shamelessly deserting myself and the companion, and I could see that Mrs. Daisie was talking religion again; a thing that disgusted me, and inclined me to have no mercy on her, if ever she should need it at my hands. I can’t say I am particularly religious myself, but any decent man hates to see piety used as a cloak. They had got out the hymn book she had given him—a tiny, fancy little white leather thing, the size of a match-box—and were looking up something or other in it, their heads very close together....
“Would you like to see the cassowary?” asked the companion suddenly. I had almost forgotten her existence; she was of those gray, dusty women of no particular age, whom, somehow or other, one always does overlook.
“What cassowary?” I asked.
“Ours. It’s such a funny thing. It dances and fights and does lots of queer tricks of its own. We have it shut up in the fowl-house.”