"Going out?" exclaimed Forsyth, with well simulated surprise. "I thought I caught a glimpse of her going upstairs a moment ago. She seemed to have only just arrived."
"Oh no, sir; she came in an hour ago, and was on her way out just now when she found she'd forgotten something."
Forsyth left the proximity of the porter quickly, and went and waited at the foot of the staircase. The horizon had cleared again, and he smiled at the very thin trick which had so nearly deceived him—would have deceived him, in fact, if one of the gang, eagerly expecting her, had not chanced to be at her door when he went up. After concluding her business with her accomplices she had contrived the meeting on the stairs to throw dust in his eyes, going, in her desire for realism, to the length of explaining to the hall-porter why she had gone upstairs again after coming down into the hall. Well, he would hold her to the lunch invitation; let her think that she had hoodwinked him; and endeavor to ascertain whether she was courting his society as a mere bluff to lend color to her deception, or with some other object as yet undefined.
He had not long to wait for her. Tripping lightly down the stairs, she joined him with a charming assumption that he would be interested to hear that her jewels were "quite safe," and she supplemented the information with the request that they should not lunch in the hotel.
"I am known here, and people stare so," she said. "Take me somewhere where we can be quiet. I have got something to say."
"Very well," he replied. "Come over to Kettner's. There won't be much of a crowd there at this time of day." And he strove hard to be polite as he steered her across the Strand, though he could have wished himself back at the Foreign Office, with no prospects and no Duke to serve, if Sybil's brave young face had not been in his mind's eye.
At the restaurant Mrs. Talmage Eglinton chose a table in a remote corner of the dining-room and devoted herself to a careful study of the menu. It was not till she had selected her dishes and quizzed the appearance of the other customers that she developed her plan of attack.
"You don't seem at all interested in the fact that I have something to say to you," she began, leaning back and scanning him critically. Her voluptuous style of beauty had never had any attraction for him; to-day it positively repelled.
"My worst enemies have never accused me of being curious," he answered lightly. "Nay, I am not discourteous," he protested, seeing the angry gleam in the fine eyes. "I only mean that I cannot work myself into a fever about a communication the subject of which I am ignorant of."
"Tell me," she said abruptly, "what reason you had for following me from St. Pancras to Bond Street this morning?"