“Oh, well,” she said, “indirect influences scarcely count, or one might trace the causes of everything which happens back to an absurd extent. If this man was mad he might just as well have shot Brott for anything.”
Lucille made no answer. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She did not speak again till they reached Dover.
They embarked in the drizzling rain. Lady Carey drew a little breath of relief as they reached their cabin, and felt the boat move beneath them.
“Thank goodness that we are really off. I have been horribly nervous all the time. If they let you leave England they can have no suspicion as yet.”
Lucille was putting on an ulster and cap to go out on deck.
“I am not at all sure,” she said, “that I shall not return to England. At any rate, if Victor does not come to me in Paris I shall go to him.”
“What beautiful trust!” Lady Carey answered. “My dear Lucille, you are more like a school-girl than a woman of the world.”
A steward entered with a telegram for Lucille. It was banded in at the Haymarket, an hour before their departure. Lucille read it, and her face blanched. “I thank you for your invitation, but I fear that it would not be good for my health.—S.”
Lady Carey looked over her shoulder. She laughed hardly.
“How brutal!” she murmured. “But, then, Victor can be brutal sometimes, can’t he?”