“Oh, Michael!”
A little, stricken cry broke from her lips. What men and women make each other suffer! She realised it as she met the stark, bitter misery of the grey eyes that burned at her out of the thin face and remembered the look on Magda’s own face when she had last seen her.
She went straight to the point without a word of greeting or of explanation. There was no time for explanations, except the only one that mattered.
“Michael, why didn’t you answer Lady Arabella’s letter?”
He stared at her. Then he passed his hand wearily across his forehead.
“Letter? I don’t remember any letter.”
“She wrote to you about a month ago. I know the letter was forwarded on to Rome. It must have followed you here.”
“A month ago?” he repeated.
Then a light broke over his face. He turned and crossed the room to where a small pile of letters lay on a table, dusty and forgotten.
“Perhaps it’s here,” he said. “I was taken ill directly I arrived. I never even sent this address to the concierge at Paris. I believe I was off my head part of the time—‘flue plays the deuce with you. But I remember now. The nurse told me there were some letters which had come while I was ill. I—didn’t bother about them.”