“No.—I don’t think so.”
“My darling! You must know what your book looked like! If it was my Modern Library edition, of course it doesn’t matter a bit,—though it has my notes in it! Where did you find the one you used? In the library or my sitting room?”
Petra’s eyes met Lewis’. She found his look completely, absorbedly hers. She took a grip on that absorption, steadied herself by it, and answered Clare. “I don’t remember where I found it, but it hasn’t your notes. It’s not your copy. And it’s not Father’s. It’s my own.”
“But it must be your father’s or mine. There are only those two copies of Pater in the house. I don’t see—”
But suddenly Clare did appear to see and broke off. Indeed, an expression of seeing all too well had passed wavelike over her quicksilver face. She turned to Lewis as if to distract attention from what she had suddenly seen, and perhaps, too, from Petra’s hot cheeks, and asked him whether he had read her husband’s latest novel. He had and began talking about it. But he wanted to take Petra’s hand, where it lay on her chair arm, and close his down on it with strength. He did not care about what he surmised was a mere silly schoolgirl fib. If she wanted to impress Clare and Dick—even himself—with the seriousness of her reading, what of it! At least, she did not lie subtly, through the medium of fleeting quicksilver changes of facial expression. Hardly. The cheek he barely allowed himself to see was one flame—as if an angel had lied.
Tea and a protracted discussion of Lowell Farwell’s novels came to an end in time, and Lewis at last could turn to Petra with: “I want to hear something about Teresa. Or must I say Miss Kerr?—But I’m not going to ‘Miss’ you, Petra, if you don’t mind. Until to-day I have never thought of one of you girls without the other. Shall I meet her too, again? I hope so.”
But something was wrong, terribly wrong. This, surely, was not a question Petra would need to make up an answer for! But she was not even trying to make up an answer. She was looking, almost wildly, toward Clare.
Clare laughed. “Why, Petra! You never told me you and Doctor Pryne had mutual friends! Teresa—?”
“Yes. Teresa Kerr.” Lewis spoke shortly, dryly, because of his complete astonishment at Petra’s ill-concealed panic.
“Oh!” Clare remembered. Suddenly, it seemed. “That must have been the maid. Petra, I wonder what has become of Teresa? You were David and Jonathan once, you two. You were a funny child, my dear, when I first knew you in Cambridge—and so beautifully democratic! But I’m afraid we can’t tell you anything about the girl, Doctor Pryne. The whereabouts of vanished domestics is as much a problem as that of all safety pins. Richard! Do you remember Felix Fairfax, our inimitable butler! I wonder what has become of him! My husband made me get rid of him, Doctor Pryne, because he helped himself to one of my photographs and had it in his room. I wrote him a recommendation that was a marvel, though. Anybody who couldn’t read between the lines deserved what they got....”