She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently.
Her boudoir was empty: Beauchamp had departed. She recollected his look at her, and turned over the leaves of the book he had been hastily scanning, and had condescended to approve of. On the two pages where the paper-cutter was fixed she perceived small pencil dots under certain words. Read consecutively, with a participle termination struck out to convey his meaning, they formed the pathetically ungrammatical line:
“Hear: none: but: accused: false.”
Treble dots were under the word “to-morrow.” He had scored the margin of the sentences containing his dotted words, as if in admiration of their peculiar wisdom.
She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of communication. The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the adept intriguer—French-taught!
In the course of the evening her cousin remarked:
“Captain Beauchamp must see merit in things undiscoverable by my poor faculties. I will show you a book he has marked.”
“Did you see it? I was curious to examine it,” interposed Cecilia; “and I am as much at a loss as you to understand what could have attracted him. One sentence...”
“About the sheikh in the stables, where he accused the pretended physician? Yes, what was there in that?”
“Where is the book?” said Mrs. Grancey.