“Doesn’t he know you?”
“He does now, I’m thinking. His cheek will keep him in mind of me for the next hour.”
Had the limb been no more than the victim of a chance gallantry? Hamilton looked at her perplexed. A saintly innocence spoke from her eyes. But, with a vexed laugh, he dismissed the absurdity. And then his brows lifted to a sudden inspiration. He had recalled on the instant some seeming casual words of the Duke of York addressed to himself. They had related to a saraband, and to a certain superlative guitar possessed by Arran’s sister. Now he actually blinked in the dazzling illumination of an idea. Kate, and the guitar, and the royal strummer, and Arran—lured by Moll at the Duke’s instigation—the unconscious procurer of that meeting! There, however ordered, was the connection, the explanation of the visit. He felt as sure of it as if he had himself planned out the process. Why, in the name of intrigue, had he never hit on the trail before? But, now it was found, it led to certain conclusions. With a dog’s smile showing his teeth, he clapped his two hands on the girl’s shoulders, and held her grippingly before him.
“I’ve been thinking,” said he. “You told Lord Chesterfield, and he told me, that you’d been witness of the Duke of York’s visit to his wife. Isn’t that so?”
“Sure,” said Moll, her heart going a little in spite of herself. “I looked and listened through the keyhole.” She confessed it, quite unabashed; nor did Hamilton regard the act as anything but “cricket,” in the modern meaning. Honour, with gentlemen of his kidney, was just a phrase to toss on swordpoints.
“How,” he said, “did you know it was the Duke of York?”
“I heard them say so.”
“You are lying. You pretended to Lord Chesterfield that you did not know who the visitor was, and so you give yourself away.”
“Do I? And a very pretty gift, too, though I say it.”
“Ah! You are quite shameless, I see.”