“My uncle has discovered a manuscript,” she confided. “The jewels are there.”
“In which Image?” he enquired breathlessly.
She shook her head.
“I cannot tell you any more,” she said. “In fact, I do not know any more. Everything rests with Uncle. If you can persuade him to let you have a copy of the manuscript or to tell you what is in it, perhaps, after all, you will find yourself rich again. If I can help I will.”
“If one only knew in which Image!” he muttered.
“Why, what difference could that make?” she asked, smiling. “If they are in yours, well, some day or other I am sure you will be able to secure them. If they are in his, then I am afraid your adventure will have been in vain.”
The sunlight caught her hair as she leaned once more back against the cushions. Gregory suddenly forgot the jewels. He was uneasy, unsure of himself, curiously stirred by an unexpected wave of feeling. His sense of proportion diminished. There had been a cataclysm and nothing remained on earth but this old-world garden with its elm trees and its odorous cedar, and Claire!
“It will never have been in vain,” he declared, with a curious little break in his tone.
CHAPTER III
If at times Mr. Endacott seemed a little out of his milieu at Ballaston Hall that evening, Claire, on the other hand, was an instantaneous and gorgeous success. In the Jacobean banquetting hall where she sat at her host’s right hand, her fresh, girlish beauty, with its additional charm of a constant and piquant enthusiasm, seemed in exquisite contrast to her majestic but gloomy surroundings; the great, dimly lit room, the stately rows of oil paintings, the cumbersome but magnificent furniture, impressive not because of any intrinsic art of selection, but because it was true to its period and had grown old with the house. Sir Bertram, whose attentions to the other sex, apart from times of necessity, had become rarer with the years, was, before the evening was over, proving himself not only a courteous, but even a devoted host, and Henry, who voluntarily never addressed a woman at all, actually waited for opportunities to attempt conversation in his old-fashioned, Thackerayan, but courtly fashion. Gregory watched her success with complacent amusement, content with temporary effacement, and resigned himself to the entertainment of her uncle.