He looked up into her face and gave a weak laugh. “Ma’am, take care of my cousin for me till morning, and I shall be very much in your debt.”
“Why, certainly!” said Miss Thane in her placid way.
Ten minutes later Eustacie was ensconced in a chair by the fire in Miss Thane’s bedchamber, gratefully sipping a cup of hot milk. Miss Thane sat down beside her, and said with her friendly smile: “I hope you mean to tell me all about it, for I’m dying of curiosity, and I don’t even know your name.”
Eustacie considered her for a moment. “Well, I think I will tell you,” she decided. “I am Eustacie de Vauban, and my cousin Ludovic is Lord Lavenham of Lavenham Court. He is the tenth Baron.”
Miss Thane shook her head. “It just shows how easily one may be mistaken,” she said. “I thought he was a smuggler.”
“He prefers,” said Eustacie, with dignity, “that one should call him a free trader.”
“I’m sorry,” apologized Miss Thane. “Of course, it is a much better title. I should have known. What made him take to s—free trading? It seems a trifle unusual.”
“I see that I must explain to you the talisman ring,” said Eustacie, and drew a deep breath.
Miss Thane, a sympathetic listener, followed the story of the talisman ring with keen interest, only interpolating a question when the tale became too involved to be intelligible. She accepted Ludovic’s innocence without the smallest hesitation, and said at the end of the recital that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to assist in unmasking the real culprit.
“Yes,” said Eustacie, “and me, I think that it was perhaps my cousin Tristram, for he has a collection of jewellery, and, besides, he is a person who might murder people—except that he is not at all romantic,” she added.