The Baroness laughed softly.
"Well, I got the key from the landlord a few days ago. I told him that I might take the flat, and he told me to come in and look at it and return the key—which you see I haven't done. To be quite honest with you, though, I had another reason for coming here."
The young man looked at her with mingled suspicion and admiration. She had raised her veil now, and even Wrayson was aware that he had scarcely realized how beautiful a woman she was. Her tailor-made gown of dark green cloth fitted her to perfection; she was turned out with all that delightful perfection of detail which seems to be the Frenchwoman's heritage. Her smile, half pathetic, half appealing, was certainly sufficient to turn the head of a dozen young men such as Sydney Barnes.
"I have told you," she continued, "that your brother and I used to be very good friends. I wrote him now and then some rather foolish letters. He promised to destroy them, but—men are so foolish, you know, sometimes—I was never quite sure that he had kept his word, and I meant to take this opportunity of looking for myself that he had not left them about. You do not blame me, Mr. Sydney? You are not cross?"
He kept his eyes upon her as though fascinated.
"No!" he said. "No! I mean of course not."
"These letters," she continued, "you have not seen them, Mr. Sydney? No? Or you, Mr. Wrayson?"
"We have not come across any letters at all answering to that description," Wrayson assured her.
The Baroness glanced across at Barnes, who was certainly regarding her in somewhat peculiar fashion.
"Why does Mr. Sydney look at me like that?" she asked, with a little shrug of the shoulders. "He does not think that I came here to steal? Why, Mr. Sydney," she added, "I am very, very much richer than ever your brother was."