“She gave you this!” cried the girl, and as Gimblet remained silent: “Then she cannot mind my speaking of it. Yes, it is true that we went to that house to meet Prince Felipe, but I don’t know if he came there or not.”
“No, he did not go.”
“Then the whole thing was false! I thought so at the beginning, but afterwards I was not sure. It was on Monday morning that Mrs. Vanderstein spoke to me about it. For a week she had been looking strange: excited, pleased—I don’t know what exactly—happier, younger, somehow different from her usual look. And on Monday she came to my room and told me, blushing and smiling, that it was her happiness to be loved by Prince Felipe of Targona, and that in all probability she was going to marry him. They had only seen each other in the distance, she said, but it had been love at first sight for both of them, and she was so happy, so happy! And wouldn’t I say I was glad? I asked her how she knew what he felt for her, if they had never met, and she said she had had letters from him and had written to him herself, and that she was going to meet him that very night after the opera, at the house of a friend of his. She said they could not meet in public, or at his hotel, or in her own home, as he was surrounded by his suite, and his mother, who was also with him, watched his every movement, so that all his comings and goings were seen and marked.
“They were staying at Fianti’s Hotel just opposite to us in Grosvenor Street, you know, so it would have been rather difficult for the Prince to come to our house without being noticed. It was intended that he should marry for political reasons, and at any sign of his affections being bestowed on a private individual an outcry would have been raised, which would have been hard to ignore. It was Prince Felipe’s plan, so Mrs. Vanderstein told me, that they should be married quietly and that he should then abdicate; to which less objection would be made when it was known that he was irretrievably disposed of from a matrimonial point of view. The whole story appeared to me so improbable and fantastic that I couldn’t help laughing at it, which offended my friend very much, and in order to convince me she finally showed me some of the Prince’s letters, including the one you have there. I could not doubt any longer after I had seen them, though I was surprised and, I must say, shocked to hear that the go-between in the affair and the bearer of all the notes was a Frenchwoman, a hairdresser employed by Mrs. Vanderstein, and also, it seemed, by one of the suite of Prince Felipe.
“When I heard that Mrs. Vanderstein had no idea where the house to which she was to go that night was situated, but had left all details to Madame Querterot and the Prince, I tried to convince her of the folly of such an arrangement, but nothing I could say had any effect. At last I told her that I should accompany her on this escapade; and, though she didn’t like the idea and even grew quite angry with me about it, I stuck to my point, and was so firm on the subject that in the end she gave in and said I could come if I liked. It was, all the same, with serious misgivings that I set forth with her that evening for Covent Garden, where we were first to attend the gala performance. We had hardly entered the theatre when Mrs. Vanderstein told me to run back and tell the motor not to come to fetch us. We were to go away in a carriage sent by the Prince, she said.
“I was too much worried to enjoy the opera. I don’t know whether Mrs. Vanderstein did or not, but she kept looking at her watch and fidgeting, so I think her thoughts were elsewhere. Before the last act was nearly over we left the box and went down into the hall, which was nearly empty, and told a man to call Mr. Targon’s carriage, for so it appeared the Prince was to be alluded to on this occasion. In a few minutes a brougham drove up, drawn by a dun coloured horse, which dished badly and had an odd white blaze across its nose and one eye. I noticed, too, that it was driven by a very odd-looking man, who wore a hat much too large for him crammed down over his eyes and a great scarf wrapped round his neck and high over his chin and ears; though even so I could see that he wore a beard, which is, to say the least of it, unusual in a coachman.”
“One moment,” Jennins interrupted; “do you think you could recognise the horse, Miss Turner, if you should see him again?”
“I am nearly sure I should,” Barbara replied. “There can’t be many with a blaze like that. I am more sure of it than I am of the driver. He drove very badly,” she went on, “pulling up under the arch with a jerk and throwing up his hands, each of which clutched at a rein, nearly over his head. ‘Surely there is some mistake,’ I said. ‘Are you from Mr. Targon?’ ‘I am from Mr. Targon,’ he answered hoarsely, ‘but I think there is a mistake, as you say; I was to fetch one lady, not two.’ ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Mrs. Vanderstein hurriedly. ‘Jump in, Barbara.’ And she got into the brougham herself, so that I had no choice but to follow her, and we drove off.
“Oh dear, how badly that man drove! Luckily there was hardly any traffic about, but we bumped into three things before we got to the top of Regent Street, and went over the curb at the corners I don’t know how often. Once the carriage stopped and the driver leant down and called through the window that he had orders to fetch one lady, and that I must get out. This I absolutely refused to do, and by this time Mrs. Vanderstein was so much alarmed by the reckless way in which he drove that I don’t think she would have allowed me to leave her even if I had wished to do so. After a heated dispute a small crowd began to gather round us, and the coachman seeing, I fancy, the shadow of an approaching policeman, suddenly abandoned the contest, and whipping up his horse we lurched forward again as the animal started with a bound.
“It was a long drive, and towards the end of it I lost all notion of direction and had no idea where we were going. At last, with a final bump and jolt, we drove in at the gate of a little house, which seemed to stand back from the road in a tiny garden, and pulled up with a jerk before a flight of steps, at the top of which a door was flung open the moment we stopped, and I recognised the figure of Madame Querterot standing back from it in the half light of the passage.