“Good-by, Miss Mordaunt.”
“Not for long—an hour—two?”
“I am glad to have pleased you. I shall always remember how the brunette type of angels look when they thank Providence.”
“It is not fair to flatter when one is highly happy and deeply thankful, for then one hears everything as music. Tell me of it some other time, when I shall have a sharper answer ready. But stay—one word. It is of these certificates that Mr. Van Hupfeldt, too, must somehow have got wind. Does the girl say that any one else knows of them?”
“A man named Strauss knows of them.”
At that name her eyelids fell as if her modesty had been hurt. “Does not Mr. Van Hupfeldt know of them?” she asked, with face averted.
“I cannot tell you—yet,” he answered, turning a little from her lest she caught the grim smile on his lips. “Why do you think that he may know?”
“Because some days ago he wrote me a note—it is this. It can refer only to these certificates, I suppose.”
She handed to David his own note—“It is now a pretty certain thing that your sister was a duly wedded wife”—and David, looking at it, asked with something of a flush: “Did Mr. Van Hupfeldt say that it was he who sent you this? I see that it has no signature.”