He felt somewhat reassured, as to her mental state anyhow, when she re-entered, looking so cheerful, so self-possessed, yet, alas! physically so fragile.
She seemed perfectly normal, and yet he noticed how often she glanced at that vacant place with the chair drawn up before it, with such a curious expression in her eyes, as if she indeed saw Roger sitting there in the flesh. It was absolutely uncanny.
“Now what’s the trouble, Austin?” she asked, when the simple meal was at an end, and Miss Culpepper retreated with the breakfast things, leaving them together. She had drawn up a chair for him in front of the fire, and he knew that the vacant easy one was reserved for Roger, that “shadowy third.”
“First it’s about Roger. I’ve been following up every trail I could think of, Grace, and every one of them has led just nowhere. I seem to get up against a blank wall every time. I’ve even been to Snell again, but he can’t or won’t help; and sometimes I feel just about in despair!”
She met his troubled gaze serenely.
“I know you are leaving no stone unturned, Austin, and that the reason why you have not been to see me was because you had discovered nothing at present. But don’t let it trouble you. We must just go on keeping our hearts up, trusting and waiting. That’s sometimes the hardest thing in life, but it’s got to be done. And Roger will be cleared, how or when I do not know—yet: only that he will be saved, freed, his innocence established before the whole world!”
“You’re wonderful, Grace! I wish to heaven I had such faith.”
“I couldn’t live without it,” she said simply. “We all seem to be moving in a terrible fog, or, rather, to be so enveloped in it that we can’t move, we don’t know which way to turn! But the fog’s going to lift, the sun’s going to shine—in time! Have you seen much of the Cacciolas lately?”
“Not for the last few days. I’ve been in and out a good deal, have got to know them pretty well, and the more I know them the better I like them—even young Melikoff—and the more I’m convinced that none of them had any more to do with that unhappy woman’s death than you or I had, and know no more about it. They seldom speak of it now—never when Boris is there. Lady Rawson seems to have had a sort of malign influence over him, which Maddelena resented bitterly; so did the maestro, for all he’s so gentle and tolerant, dear old man!”
“Was that Miss Maddelena I saw you with last week?” asked Grace quietly.