Summing up, Lanyard told himself he could hardly be said to have let grass grow under his feet since leaving Château de Montalais.
Now he found himself with a solitary care to nurse, the question: What had her pillow advised Liane Delorme?
He was going to be exceedingly interested to learn what she, in the maturity of her judgement, had decided to do about this man who ingenuously suggested that she requite him for saving her life by helping him recover the Montalais jewels.
On the other hand, since Lanyard had quite decided what he meant to do about Liane in any event, her decision really didn't matter much; and he refused to fret himself trying to forecast it. Whatever it might turn out to be, it would find him prepared, he couldn't be surprised. There Lanyard was wrong. Liane was amply able to surprise him, and did. Ultimately he felt constrained to concede a touch to genius in the woman; her methods were her own and never poor in boldness and imagination.
It was without ceremony that she walked in on him at length, having kept him waiting so long that he had begun to wonder if she meant to try on anything as crude as abandoning him, and posting off to Cherbourg without a word to seek fancied immunity in New York, while he remained in an empty house without money, papers of identification, or even fit clothing for the street; for, on coming out of his bath, Lanyard had found all of these things missing, the valet de chambre presumably having made off with his evening clothes, to have them pressed and repaired.
Liane was dressed for travelling, becomingly if with a sobriety that went oddly with her cultivated beauté du diable, and wore besides a habit of preoccupation which, one was left to assume, excused the informality of her unannounced entrance.
"Well, my dear friend!" she said gravely, halting by the bedside.
"It's about time," Lanyard retorted.
"I was afraid you might be growing impatient," she confessed. "I have had so much to do..."
"No doubt. But if you had neglected me much longer I should have come to look for you regardless of consequences."