“You wrote to say that no certificates were ever found!”
“I did.”
“Then what can she think of me?” he cried with a face of pain. “I told her—”
“Ah, you are after her, too? I see now how it is,” said Miss L’Estrange.
“But she might at least have given me a chance of clearing myself!” groaned David. “She might have written to me to say that she had found me out in a lie.”
Violet had, indeed, promised herself the luxury of writing one “stinging, crushing, killing” note to David in the event of Miss L’Estrange proving him false. And, in fact, not one but many such notes had been written down at Dale Manor. But none of them had ever been sent—her deep disdain had kept her silent.
“But,” cried David, at the spur of a sudden glad thought, “since Miss Mordaunt wrote to you, and you to her, you know her address, and can give it me!”
“No, I don’t know her address,” answered Miss L’Estrange. “I believe now that Strauss may have been afraid that if I knew it I might give it to you, so he must have prevented her from putting it on her letter. There was no address on it, I don’t think, for when I wrote back to her I gave my letter to Strauss to send.”
“Ah, he’s a cautious beast!” said David, bitterly. “Still—I’ll have him—not to-morrow, but to-night. Quick, now—his address.”