I was certain that her lip twitched—the ghost of an understanding smile.
“Try it again,” she answered. “I like to hear you play.”
I sat down, and shaped out a chord or two. “No,” I said, “it is still as impossible as ever; and that is the mystery.”
She did not comment on the mystery of my calling it one; and I asked no question—I was resolute in my philosophy of silence. But here was certainly an unlooked-for development of a situation already sufficiently cryptic. Did she know that I guessed? I think so, or she would not have passed my innuendo unchallenged. But in that case she must have known that I knew how she had betrayed her own retreat. And to whom—an emissary of Marion, of the Marquis himself, perhaps?
Hardly the first, since, if so, there was nothing to prevent her including me in her confidence. If the second, then I was being made catspaw to some mystery to which the other was only a blind. And that I could not believe: there had never been a suggestion of affectation in her part of fugitive, under whatever moral stimulus she had been brought to play it. She might know nothing as to the true cause of her titular father’s implacable malignity towards her—as I asked no questions I was in no position to judge—or she might know everything. That she genuinely hugged her concealment and dreaded discovery was proof sufficient that she could be in no secret collusion with the supposed terrific power which had made that concealment necessary. No, here was some collateral enigma, about which it really did not concern me to bother myself. If my guest chose to entertain, unknown to me, mysterious visitors, who for some reason regarded me curiously in passing, she had calculated, no doubt, the profits and risks of the game. I was playing my own promised part squarely and loyally; she must do as she liked with hers. I took a book, and sat reading in silence.
I thought Fifine glanced at me once or twice, as if in indecision or compunction; but nothing came of it, and presently she said:—
“You have not heard yet from Mademoiselle Herold?”
“My step-sister? No,” I answered, a little surprised, for this was the first time that any direct reference had been made by either of us to the all-important matter.
She gave a little sigh.
“Do you want me to hear?” I said, putting down my book. “Are you so tired of it all—the confinement, the sense of peril, your company?”