Having given a brief order that they were not to be disturbed, Wantley made his way to the studio with the jewel-case in his hand. For a moment he waited just inside the door. Penelope was standing at the further end of the long room, leaning over the marble top of the high mantelpiece, writing out a telegram. She still wore a large straw hat, of which the sides, flattened down over her ears by broad black ribbons tied under the chin, framed her face, and gave a softened, old-fashioned grace to her tall, rounded figure.
As Wantley finally advanced towards her, she looked up, and her glance, her suspended writing—above all, her blue eyes full of questioning anger at the intrusion of his presence—showed him that she knew nothing, that the task he had so greatly dreaded lay before him.
Taking his stand by the other side of the mantelpiece, he put down the case containing her letters, and pushed it towards her. Twice he opened his lips but closed them again without speaking.
'Well,' she said shortly, as her eyes rested indifferently on the little jewel-box, 'I suppose this is something else left by Theresa Wake. It can be sent on to-morrow with the other thing, but I'll mention it in the telegram.' And she paused, as if expecting him to leave her. Indeed, her eyes, her mouth, set in stern lines, seemed to say: 'Cannot you go away, and leave me in peace? Your very presence here, unasked, in my own room, is an outrage after the way you behaved to me last night.' But she remained silent, content to wait, pencil in hand, for him to be gone, before concluding her slight task.
'Penelope,' he said at last, stung into courage by her manner and by her contemptuous glance, 'this box was not left by Miss Wake—it once belonged to Sir George Downing, and its contents are, I believe, yours.'
Again he touched the case, pushed it away from himself towards her. It slid across the polished surface of the marble to within an inch of her elbow; but, though he became aware that she stiffened into close attention, his cousin still said no word.
Her silence became to him unbearable. He walked round, and, standing close beside her, deliberately pressed the spring, and revealed what lay within.
As if she had been physically struck, Penelope suddenly drew back. 'Ah!' she said, and that was all. But in a moment her hand had closed on the little case, and she held it clasped to her, shutting out the smiling childish face which lay above the packet of her letters to Downing. So quietly, so quickly had she done this that he wondered for a moment if she had really seen and realized all that was lying there. 'She knows the truth,' he said to himself. 'Thank God I was mistaken—someone else has told her!'
He waited for a question, even for a cry. But none such came from the rigid figure.
'Penelope,' he said at last, and there was a note of tenderness in Wantley's voice she had never before heard in it, 'forgive me the pain I have to inflict on you. I thought that—that these things ought to be given you now, at once. I am sure you will destroy them immediately.'