"I don't know if you gathered yesterday ... the Pforzheims are old friends of my family."
"Oh?" said Napier.
"Their father and my father were brothers-in-arms," she went on in that heroine-of-melodrama style she sometimes affected. "They have been close friends since their university days."
"Really." Napier's calm seemed to detract from her own.
The color surged into her round cheeks, but she held her head dauntlessly on its short white neck as she confessed, "Carl and Ernst have known me since I was a child."
Napier laid down the newspaper. "Indeed!"
"I suppose," she challenged him, "you think, that being the case, it was very odd we should meet like strangers?"
"Oh, I dare say you had your reasons," he said, as Andrews came in. Napier walked the length of the hall to where the man had put down the bag.
Miss von Schwarzenberg did not move till Andrews had gone out. She did not move even then, until Napier found his keys, selected his duplicate, fitted it to the lock, and at last threw back the leather flap and drew out the letters.
That instant, as though she had only just resumed control of her self-possession, Miss von Schwarzenberg, handkerchief in hand, moved softly down the hall and stood at Napier's side. It came over him that this wasn't the first time that she had executed this simple manœuver, if manœuver it was. He knew now that he had been imputing to his own attractiveness her invariable drawing near while he transacted his business with the letter-bag. The little pause before Andrews left the room he had set down as a concession to the proprieties. More than ever—so he had read her—if she laid traps for little talks with the private secretary, was it important that the servants should not be set gossiping. But now, with an inward jolt, he asked, had he been making an ass of himself? His hand, already inserted a second time to draw out more letters, came forth empty. He noticed that her eyes were on it as he turned the palm of his hand toward him, fingers doubled and nails in a line. He studied them.