Lady Delahaye looked at me with a faint smile. Her expression puzzled me. I was not even able to guess at the thoughts which lay underneath her words.
"How anxious you must be," she murmured. "Do you know, I always wondered whether Isobel would not some day weary of your milk-and-water Bohemianism. Your Scotch friend is worthy, no doubt, but dull, and the boy was too hopelessly in love to be amusing. And as for you—well—you would do very nicely, no doubt, my dear Arnold, but you are too stuffed up with principles for a girl of Isobel's antecedents. So she has cut the Gordian knot herself! Well, I am sorry!"
"You are sorry!" I repeated. "Why?"
She smiled sweetly at me.
"Because my dear friend has promised me that wonderful emerald necklace if I could get the child away from you, and I think that very soon, with the help of that stupid boy, I should have succeeded," she said regretfully. "Such emeralds, Arnold! and you know how anything green suits me."
"You do not doubt, then, but that it is the Archduchess who has done this?" I said.
Lady Delahaye lifted her eyebrows.
"Either the Archduchess, or Isobel has walked off of her own sweet will," she remarked calmly. "In any case you have lost the child, and I have lost my necklace. I positively cannot risk losing my dinner too," she added, with a glance at the clock, "so I am afraid—I am so sorry, but I must ask you to go away. Come and see me again, won't you? Perhaps we can be friends again now that this bone of contention is removed."
"I have never desired anything else, Lady Delahaye," I said. "But if my friendship is really of any value to you, if you would care to earn my deepest gratitude, you could easily do so."
"Really! In what manner?"