“It strikes me, Mrs. Artress,” she said quietly, “that the marriage of Lady Wynde to Mr. Black has completely transformed you. You do not seem like the same person.”
“And I am not,” declared Mrs. Artress. “There is no use in keeping the secret any longer, Miss Wynde. The whole world may know that I am the cousin of Craven Black, and being his cousin, of course I am his wife’s equal. I am going into society with Mrs. Craven Black during the approaching season, and it is quite possible that I may make as brilliant a marriage as Octavia Hathaway did when she married Sir Harold Wynde.”
Neva started, those careless words bringing to her awakening mind a crowd of new and strange suspicions. She remembered that Mrs. Artress had been in Octavia Hathaway’s employ before the marriage of the latter with Sir Harold. And Mrs. Artress was Craven Black’s cousin! Perhaps it was through Mrs. Artress, and after the death of Sir Harold Wynde in India, that Craven Black and Lady Wynde had become acquainted? And perhaps Craven Black had known Octavia Hathaway before her marriage to Sir Harold Wynde?
The thought—the doubt—was torture to her.
“I had not suspected your relationship to Mr. Black,” she said coldly; “but I saw, upon the very morning after Mrs. Black’s marriage, that your relations to her had changed.”
She longed to ask, directly or indirectly, how long Octavia had known Craven Black, but her pride would not permit her to put the question. She turned haughtily away from Mrs. Artress, signifying by her manner that she desired to be alone.
The woman’s face reddened, and she turned away with scarcely smothered anger.
“There is no bell in the room, Miss Wynde,” she said, halting an instant at the door; “but you will hear the dinner bell, even in here. There will be a servant in the hall to show you down to the dining-room.”
She went out, closing the door behind her.
Neva’s first act, on being left alone, was to examine the two windows under their roller blinds and chintz curtains. The windows were of the quaint, old-fashioned sort, with tiny diamond panes set in heavy divisions of lead. The windows were casements, opening like doors, upon hinges, but the lock and fastening were intricate, and had they not been, it would have been difficult to open the windows owing to the presence of the inside blinds and curtains.