CHAPTER XVI
BARBED SHAFTS
Louise Aubin stood behind her young mistress's dressing chair, brushing the glorious tresses which her deft fingers would presently coil and coax into the latest fashionable mode. There was to be a small dinner party at the Manor House that evening. Mr. Vernon Mallory and his daughter were coming, also Leslie Chermside and Travers Nugent, as well as a few local people in whom we are not interested. It was the day following that on which Aunt Sarah had raised hopes for her protégées, which, so far as one of them was concerned, were so rudely dashed in the card-room at the club.
The maid glanced furtively at the beautiful face in the mirror opposite, and took note of the dreamy happiness in Violet Maynard's eyes. Violet had been consistently kind to her, and Louise, selfish though she was to the core, was not wholly ungrateful. She had deceived herself into the belief that she was about to do her mistress a genuine service, but it was characteristic of her that she rather enjoyed the prospect of inflicting pain in the process.
"I should so like to consult you, mees, about an affair of my own," she began hesitatingly. There was no need for the hesitation, mademoiselle having been carefully coached for the part she was to play no later than that afternoon, when she had paid another surreptitious visit to The Hut. But a shy modesty was a weapon in her equipment for the fray.
Violet looked up quickly. The note of diffidence was unusual. "Of course, Louise, you can ask me anything," she said, wondering why the Abigail's gaze was so swiftly averted. "I should have thought, though, that you are much more capable of managing your affairs than I am."
The Frenchwoman contrived to show deprecation in the twirl she gave to the silver hair-brush. "In small things, mees, perhaps," she answered. "But this is not small, the thing in which I beg you to advise. It is an affair of the 'eart, and an affair of murderre—the murderre of the gentleman who was killed on the marsh."
Violet with difficulty repressed a smile. The subject was a gruesome one, but, serene in her own love idyll, she had really paid very little attention to it. "You don't mean to tell me, Louise, that you killed that unfortunate man because he did not appreciate your charms?"
Mademoiselle was on her dignity at once; moreover, having marked down higher game, she could afford to be quite genuine in her repudiation of any partiality for Mr. Levi Levison.