The two locked themselves in for their occasional seances in this room, and Jack himself answered the knock. He was about to scold Togo for disturbing him (a thing strictly forbidden to all except the Duchess) when the sight of Lyda's handwriting pencilled on an envelope caused him to bite back the words.
"Who brought this?" he asked.
"A boy, sir," replied the Japanese. "He is from some theatre. He said he went first to the Tarascon Hotel, but they told him you'd left word to have you called up here for anything important, so he came round."
"Is he waiting for an answer?"
"No, sir. He was in a hurry to get back. He said there was no answer."
Jack retired into the study with the letter and carefully, gently opened the envelope. Even though he was eager to know what Lyda had to say, he couldn't deal roughly with anything she had touched. This was not the only letter he had had from her, but it made his heart beat as if it were the first.
"My dear friend," she wrote with pencil, evidently in haste, "I have something very important to tell you. I cannot put it well in a letter. But it has to do with the Duchess, your cousin. She may be running into some danger. I should like to save her from that if I could! Come to the theatre and see me for a few minutes. I shall be free at six precisely, after rehearsing my new dance of the 'Swan and the Cygnet' with Mrs. Van Esten's little girl. Then I shall have a few minutes for you. Meanwhile, however, if you have time after getting this, try to make your cousin's maid tell if she knows where her mistress has gone. Yours ever—Lyda P."
This was all. But to Jack Manners it was sweet as the perfume of an Eastern garden by moonlight—her perfume! It was all he could do to wrench his mind from entranced thoughts of Lyda, to concentrate them upon Juliet. Poor Juliet! He understood now why he hadn't suffered at seeing her after her marriage, or cared a single rap! It was because he'd never been in love with her really, except as a dear, rather trying cousin, and because what he'd called "love" had worn off even before that, like thinly spread gilt on gingerbread! He had not known what love was till the night when Lyda Pavoya's eyes said to him with their first blinding look, "You are the man; I am the woman."
He believed in her utterly now, and if he had not, he would have wished to kill himself. To know her, a good and glorious woman, made the splendour of life.
"Why, Juliet has gone to the dress rehearsal of the roof-garden show," he remembered. That was the word she had left with Togo to give him and Sanders on opening the door for them. But—Lyda was at the rehearsal! And she hadn't seen Juliet. Before sending such a message to him she would have made certain that the Duchess hadn't arrived! He would have Simone down at once!