When he had put her into the hansom outside the tea-shop and directed the driver to take her to Lady Jennings’ house, she had been dressed in pale blue, with a big hat of the deep color of a sapphire. He had noted this particularly, as he was struck with the taste of her dress and had vaguely wondered why other girls could not manage to look as well-dressed as she always did.
She had had no cloak with her, as she had left behind her, in the tea-shop, the handsome dark-blue mantle, lined with the paler color, which he had himself taken to Lady Jennings’ for her.
Now, however, Miss Davison was wearing, not the big blue hat, but a small dark toque swathed round with one of those large gauze motor-veils which can be used as an effectual mask for the features.
And her figure was disguised as effectually as her face; for she wore a large black garment with voluminous sleeves, and as one side of it flew back when she ascended the steps to the police-station he noted that there was, fastened to the hem, a square white price-ticket, indicating plainly that the mantle was new from some shop.
This incident seemed to him conclusive and stupefying.
After her narrow escape—if it was altogether an escape, which he did not yet know—of that afternoon, and after directing him to tell the cabman to take her home, Miss Davison would appear to have changed her mind, and to have immediately seized the opportunity of being alone to do a little more shop-lifting!
Reluctant as he was to come to this conclusion, there seemed to be no other to come to. For he knew she had not been home, on the one hand, and yet she was wearing a different hat and mantle since he had last seen her!
As for any possibility that he could have been mistaken as to the identity of the lady in the brand-new cloak and the motor-veil, he knew there was none. Closely as she was wrapped up, Rachel had made far too deep an impression upon Gerard for him to fail to recognize not merely the figure, but the carriage and the walk, of the woman who had attracted him more than any other in the world.
He waited at a distance of a few yards to see what would happen.
There was a long pause, and then a policeman came out and spoke to the cabman and went into the police-station again.