'By whom?'
'I do not—cannot say by whom,' she replied, with half-averted face.
'Do you suspect?'
'Yes.'
And a crash on the instrument closed a conversation, on which Cecil resolved not to lose a moment in acting, and repairing to his own room, transferred the packet from the sabretache attached to his sword-belt to the breast-pocket of his uniform tunic.
He felt grateful to her for the interest Margarita had thus evinced in him, but he was sorely puzzled to know why Guebhard was so anxious to obtain the documents committed to his care; and he was soon convinced that her suggestion had not come too soon, when about two hours after he discovered the Servian captain in the act of quitting his—Cecil's—apartment.
'You here, Captain Guebhard?' he exclaimed, with surprise and indignation in his tone, all the more so that he read a baffled and confused expression in the face of the other.
'Pardon me,' said he, bowing and passing on, 'but the dressing-bell has rung for dinner—I was in haste, and mistook your apartment for mine.'
It might be so; but Cecil thought it a curious circumstance that his belt and sabretache, which he had left hanging on the wall, were now lying on a sofa, and he smiled as he felt the packet safe in his breast, and resolved to secure his door for that night, the last he meant to spend in Palenka.
Cecil resolved to be in every way on his guard against this man Guebhard, and yet ere the night passed he was very nearly having a quarrel with him—a quarrel which, but for some forbearance on the part of the former, might have ended in a resort to pistols between them, after the ladies had retired and he and the captain were left to their cigars and wine; but the latter preferred raki, and under its influence he lost much of his subtle suavity and oily politeness, and the real Bulgar in his blood came out.