"What could he have wanted? When I came in, he turned pale and levelled the pistol at me. I was frightened, but not much. When I desired him, he laid down the pistol directly, and then I seized it. And then——"
Her eyes fall upon the hearthrug. Half under the fender a small piece of crumpled paper attracts her notice. Still talking, she stoops mechanically and picks it up, smooths it, and opens it.
"Why, what is this?" she says, a moment later; "and what a curious hand! Not a gentleman's surely."
"One of Thomas's billet-doux, no doubt," says Geoffrey, dreamily, alluding to the under-footman, but thinking of something else.
"No, no; I think not. Come here, Geoffrey; do. It is the queerest thing,—like a riddle. See!"
He comes to her and looks over her shoulder at the paper she holds. In an ugly unformed hand the following figures and words are written upon it,—
"7—4. Press top corner,—right hand."
This is all. The paper is old, soiled, and has apparently made large acquaintance with pockets. It looks, indeed, as if much travel and tobacco are not foreign to it. Geoffrey, taking it from Mona, holds it from him at full length, with amiable superciliousness, between his first finger and thumb.
"Thomas has plainly taken to hieroglyphics,—if it be Thomas," he says. "I can fancy his pressing his young woman's right hand, but her 'top corner' baffles me. If I were Thomas, I shouldn't hanker after a girl with a 'top corner;' but there is no accounting for tastes. It really is curious, though, isn't it?" As he speaks he looks at Mona; but Mona, though seemingly returning his gaze, is for the first time in her life absolutely unmindful of his presence.
Slowly she turns her head away from him, and, as though following out a train of thought, fixes her eyes upon the panelled wall in front of her.