Then the girl resolutely crushed the absurd emotion that led her to shirk her companion’s scrutiny: she was so taken aback by this unexpected complaisance in a quarter where she was prepared for opposition that she turned and laid a grateful hand on the other woman’s arm.
“Now that is perfectly sweet of you,” she said softly. “I would just love to see that river by moonlight, and—and—I fancied you were a bit weary of the road. It wouldn’t matter if the country were not so wonderful, but when one has to screw one’s head round quickly or one misses a castle or a prize landscape, a hundred miles of that sort of thing becomes a strain.”
“This seems to be quite a restful place,” agreed Mrs. Devar. “Have you—er—told Fitzroy of the proposed alteration in our arrangements?”
Cynthia grew interested in the yachts again.
“No,” she said, “I’ve not mentioned it to him—yet.”
A maid-servant entered, and Cynthia inquired if the hotel could provide three rooms for her party.
The girl, a pretty Celt of the fair-haired type, said she was sure there was accommodation.
“Then,” said Cynthia, with what she felt to be a thoroughly self-possessed air, “please ask my chauffeur if he would like another cup of tea, and tell him to house the car and have our boxes sent in, as we shall stay here till half-past eight to-morrow morning.”
Mrs. Devar’s letter to Peter Vanrenen forthwith entered the category of things that must be done at the earliest opportunity. She wrote it before dinner, taking a full hour in the privacy of her room to compose its few carefully considered sentences. She posted it, too, and was confirmed in her estimate of its very real importance when she saw a muslined Cynthia saunter out and join “Fitzroy,” who happened to be standing on a tiny landing-stage near a boathouse.
Yet, so strangely constituted is human nature of the Devar variety, she would have given half the money she possessed if she could have recalled that letter an hour later. But His Majesty’s mails are inexorable as fate. A twopence-ha’penny stamp had linked Symon’s Yat and Paris, and not all Mrs. Devar’s world-worn ingenuity could sunder that link.