Beppo would have been extremely surprised had he heard the words she uttered as she entered the room where her husband sat playing patience. Those words were:
“The body of Vissering has been found, Angelo. And we must be prepared for some kind of interrogation. I do not feel we can absolutely trust Mme. Sansot. She has been most sensible and most loyal up to now, but still, one never knows——”
Count Polda got up—a sure sign of agitation with him—and came towards her.
“It is no use to build a bridge for trouble,” he said slowly. “Unlike you, I am not afraid of Leonie Sansot. I think she will keep faith with us. The more so that it would only be a complication were she now to admit she had not told the truth at first! Also, she knows so very little. Only that the old brute dined here the night he disappeared.”
His words consoled the Countess considerably. She suddenly made up her mind that she would not tell him yet of the perilous task which lay just in front of them. There would be time for that a little later on.
By the time her son and Lily came back to La Solitude, she was her own genial, rather garrulous self again.
CHAPTER XXVIII
It was Beppo’s last day, and what had happened forty-eight hours ago now seemed to Lily Fairfield like a bad dream.
Beppo was once more the kindly, good-natured, almost brotherly friend of his first week’s stay at La Solitude. And though Lily could see that Aunt Cosy was unlike herself, for she looked oddly disturbed, anxious and gloomy, she had taken very well the news that Lily had accepted an invitation to stay with the matron of the Convalescent Home for a few days.
Poor Lily! She felt ashamed of her duplicity, for she knew, deep in her heart, that she had no intention of coming back, at any rate for more than a day or two, to La Solitude.