“Yes, and I went farther than you have gone, because I thought it was play, comedy, fun. I even sat upon your gallery, just outside the billiard-room—and smoked two cigarettes. You'll find the stubs on the porch railing if her ladyship's servants are not too exemplary.” She was looking at him in wide-eyed unbelief. “I was there when you came out on the lawn with the Frenchman.”
“Did you hear what he was—what we were saying?” she asked, nervously and going pale.
“No. I was not eavesdropping. Besides, you returned to the house very abruptly, if you remember.”
“Yes, I remember,” she said, a sigh of relief accompanying the warm glow that came to her cheek. “But were you not afraid of being discovered? 'How imprudent of you!”
“It was a bit risky, but I rather enjoyed it. The count spoke to me as I left the place. It was dark and he mistook me for one of your party. I could n't wait to see if you returned to renew the tête-à-tête—”
“I did not return,” she said. It was his turn to be relieved.
CHAPTER IV—IN WHICH THE TRUTH TRESPASSES
Lord and Lady Bazelhurst, with the more energetic members of their party, spent the day in a so-called hunting excursion to the hills south of the Villa. Toward nightfall they returned successfully empty-handed and rapacious for bridge. Penelope, full of smouldering anger, had spent the afternoon in her room, disdaining every call of sociability. She had awakened to the truth of the situation in so far as she was concerned. She was at least seeing things from Shaw's point of view. Her resentment was not against the policy of her brother but the overbearing, petulant tyranny of her American sister-in-law. From the beginning she had disliked Evelyn; now she despised her. With the loyal simplicity of a sister she absolved Cecil of all real blame in the outrage of the morning, attributing everything to the cruelty and envy of the despot who held the purse-strings from which dangled the pliable fortunes of Bazelhurst. The Bazelhursts, one and all—ancestors thrown in—swung back and forth on the pendulum of her capriciousness. Penelope, poor as a church mouse, was almost wholly dependent upon her brother, who in turn owed his present affluence to the more or less luckless movement of the matrimonial market. The girl had a small, inadequate income—so small it was almost worth jesting about.