“Because it is Hammersley’s?” he said. “You think so and Hammersley thinks so, and possession is nine points of the law. But I will contest.”
“Your visit is vain. Go back to London, my friend.”
“I find it pleasanter here.”
“Then you refuse?”
“I must.”
“Then it is war between us.”
“If you will have it so,” he said, with an inclination of the head. Doris put her foot on the fender and leaned with her hands upon her knee for a moment as though in deep thought. Then she turned toward the door.
“Come,” she said coolly. “Let us join the others.”
There was a relief in the thought that at least they had come to an understanding and that the matter of the possession of the papers had at last become a private contest between them. She had brought the interview to an end not because she was afraid to continue it but because she wanted to think of a plan to disarm him. She felt that she was moving in the dark but she trusted to her delicate woman’s sense of touch to stumble upon some chance, some slip of his tongue, which might lead her into the light.
In the drawing-room by common consent all talk of war had been abolished. She sat in at a hand of auction, but playing badly, she was gladly relinquished by her partner at the end of the rubber. John Rizzio, who disliked the game, had gone off for a quiet smoke, but when she got up from the card table he was there waiting for her.