John looked up quickly.
"Is this from Captain Cherriton?" he asked.
Mrs. Beecher Monmouth shook her head.
"From a far greater one than he," she answered slowly.
John pricked up his ears, then flashed a glance at the contents of the letter. But Mrs. Beecher Monmouth was very quick; he caught only the words, "secret session," and "ready by the twenty-eighth," when Mrs. Monmouth dexterously laid her white hand over the writing and drew it from his fingers. She folded it and placed it carefully in the bosom of her dress. She wore evening dress beneath her gorgeous Japanese rest gown, and John noticed the coquetry with which she concealed the letter from his view. He was young enough to be affected by her beauty, and was yet old enough to suspect she was playing a part—was, in fact, seeking to entangle him for the benefit of the cause. He put her down in that moment as a passionate, unscrupulous, dangerous woman, to whom adventure was the very breath of life. Moreover, he doubted her statement that she was German. She was certainly not his idea of a woman of Teutonic nationality.
Her arm that had been resting upon his shoulder still remained there. The lady's handsome face was very close to his; he could see deep into her smiling eyes, and was not comfortable under the closeness of her scrutiny. His resemblance to Bernard Treves was striking, but it was not perfect enough, he feared, to deceive the watchfulness of a woman who had evidently been closely intimate with that young man. He endeavoured to break the intensity of her gaze by leading her back to her chair.
"Well," she whispered tenderly, "have you nothing to say to me?"
"There are a thousand things I would like to say," returned John, promptly. "Let me light you a cigarette." He struck a match and placed one of her buff-coloured Russian cigarettes in her fingers. As he held the light, Mrs. Beecher Monmouth spoke on a new note of seriousness.
"Bernard, I have been kindness itself to you."
John assured her that she had.