"Because I want to be sure that we can talk without being observed. Miss Payne seems very friendly, and has given me her maid because, she says, an invalid needs waiting on, and she sleeps in my dressing-room. I don't want to excite suspicion by sending her away, in order to admit you, and—I don't see that there is much to be said."
Lucian seemed weighing her words for a moment. Then he asked: "What do you make of Miss Payne?"
"What do you make of her?" she retorted, quickly.
"Nothing, as yet."
"No more do I."
Another brief silence, and then he asked: "Do you think there is any immediate danger—for us?"
"As how?"
"From him: Arthur."
Now came Cora's grand coup. She felt pretty sure that Lucian knew of her interview with Madeline, and believed that she would be telling him no news when she said:
"Listen! She went with me to my room last night, and she asked a good many questions about him. And I am sure of this: she is no friend to him, and if she sees no reason for suspecting any of us, she won't trouble herself about him. She told me that she ran away from home because she had been so oppressed by him, and that his attempt to marry her off, in order to put money in his own pocket, was only one among many of the things she had endured at his hands. Of one thing I am sure: the old man may be a stumbling-block to us, but he is an object of positive hatred to her."