“Remember that, clever as your courier may be, he is not infallible. The case is only a case of suspicion. The Smith, of Venice, may be anybody. One missing link in your amateur detective’s chain of evidence, and the whole fabrication would drop to pieces. Don’t let Miss Marchant be tortured needlessly. Promise me that you will never tell her this story.”
“On my honour, I will not.”
“I thank you for that promise, and I beg you to forgive any undue vehemence upon my part just now.”
“There is nothing to forgive—I can sympathize with your feelings. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Vansittart dined in Bruton Street, as he had promised, sat by his betrothed, and listened to her happy talk of the things they had seen and the people they had met, sat behind her chair all through Boïto’s opera, unhearing, unseeing, his mind for ever and for ever travelling over the same ground, acting over and over again the same scene—the row at Florian’s, the scuffle, the fall—his own fall—the knife; and then that fatal fall of his adversary, that one gasping, surprised cry of the unarmed man, slain unawares.
Her brother! His victim, and her brother. The nearest, dearest kin of this girl on whose milk-white shoulder his breath came and went, as he sat with bent head in the shadow of the velvet curtain, and heard the strange harmonies of Pandemonium, almost as if voices and orchestra had been interpreting his own dark thoughts.
Charmed as she was with the music, Eve Marchant was far too sensitive to be unconscious of her lover’s altered spirits. Once during the applause that followed that lovely duet at the beginning of the last act, and while Lady Hartley’s attention was fixed upon the stage, Eve’s hand crept stealthily into the hand of her lover, while she whispered, “What has happened, Jack? I know there is something wrong. Why won’t you trust me?”
Trust her? Trust her with a secret that must part them for ever—let her suffer the agony of knowing that this strong right hand which her slim fingers were caressing had stabbed her brother to the heart?
“There can be nothing wrong, dearest, while I have you,” he answered, grasping her hand as if he would never let it go.