'It's a delicate point,' I said musingly. 'If we could learn something of his situation. He is very proud. Do you think that your friend, Monsieur Voisin, might possibly know something——'
She put up her hand quickly, imperiously.
'If Mr. Lossing has chosen to conceal himself from his friends, we have no right to make his presence here known to Monsieur Voisin.' She checked herself and coloured beautifully again.
'You are right,' I said promptly. I had no real thought of asking Monsieur Voisin into our councils, and I had now verified the suspicions I had held from the first—fitting the guard's statement and his personality into the story her letter told—that he was the Mr. Lossing from whom she had parted so stormily in the conservatory on the night of her aunt's reception.
And now, as I consulted my watch, she leaned toward me, and suddenly threw aside her reserve.
'Can you guess,' she asked eagerly, 'how he came to meet those women in that way? It was a meeting, was it not?'
'No doubt of that; and it was also a scheme to entrap him.'
'But—how did they do it? How did they lure him to that bridge—those two women?'
I could not suppress a smile.
'Can you not guess? It must be only a guess on my part, you know, but I fancy that in her talk with him that afternoon the brunette led him to think that you would not be unwilling to see him. I particularly noted that the woman with her was of about your height, and that she wore a hat much like the one worn by you on the day I first saw you. Now that I recall their manœuvres of last night, I remember that the hat almost concealed her face, and that they kept in the shadow.'