Medenham thanked her in his heart for that little pause. No printed page could be more legible than Cynthia’s thought-processes. How delightful it was to feel that her unspoken words were mirrored in his own brain!
But these lover-like beatitudes were interrupted by a slight shriek. She had glanced curiously at a postmark, ripped open an envelope, and was reading something that surprised her greatly.
“Well, of all the queer things!” she cried. “Here’s father in London. He started from Paris yesterday afternoon, and found he had just time to send me a line by paying a special postal fee at Paddington.... What?... Mrs. Leland going to join us at Chester!... Wire if I get this!...”
She reread the letter with heightened color. Medenham’s heart sank to his boots while he watched her. Whosoever Mrs. Leland might be—and Cynthia’s first cry of the name sent a shock of recognition through him—it was fully evident that the addition of another member to the party would straightway shut him out of his Paradise. Mrs. Devar, in the rôle of guardian, had been disposed of satisfactorily, but “Mrs. Leland” was more than a doubtful quantity. For some kindred reason, perhaps, Cynthia chose to turn and look at the sparkling Wye when next she spoke.
“I don’t see why Mrs. Leland’s unexpected appearance should make any real difference to our tour,” she said in the colorless tone of one who seeks rather than imparts conviction. “There is plenty of room in the car. We must take the front seat in turn, that is all.”
“May I ask who Mrs. Leland is?” he asked, and, if his voice was ominously cold, it may be urged in extenuation that in matters affecting Cynthia he was no greater adept at concealing his thoughts than the girl herself.
“An old friend of ours,” she explained hurriedly. “In fact, her husband was my father’s partner till he died, some years ago. She is a charming woman, quite a cosmopolitan. She lives in Paris ’most all the time, but I fancied she was at Trouville for the summer. I wonder....”
She read the letter a third time. Drooping lids and a screen of heavy eyelashes veiled her eyes, and when the fingers holding that disturbing note rested on the rail of the veranda again, still those radiant blue eyes remained invisible, and the eloquent eyebrows were not arched in laughing bewilderment but straightened in silent questioning.
“Mr. Vanrenen gives no details,” she said at last, and seldom, indeed, did “Mr. Vanrenen” replace “father” in her speech. “Perhaps he was writing against time, though he might have told me less about the post and more of Mrs. Leland. Anyhow, he has a fine Italian hand in some things, and may be this is one of them.... But I must telegraph at once.”
Medenham roused himself to set forth British idiosyncrasies on the question of Sunday labor. He remembered the telephone, however, and Cynthia went off to try and get in touch with the Savoy Hotel. He withdrew a little way, and began to smoke a reflective cigar, for he knew now who Mrs. Leland was. In twenty minutes or less Cynthia came to him. It was difficult to account for her obvious perplexity, though he could have revealed some of its secret springs readily enough.