"You can't be very miserable when you have a luncheon engagement," she insisted. "I'm not!"
He shrugged. "Till luncheon then—unless I should be back earlier than I think." He gave her a quick look, but her face did not betray awareness of the slip.
"Oh, of course, if you are at liberty sooner—And while you are busy won't you manage things so I can stay out here awhile? I shall love this garden, I know, when I am better friends with it," and after an imperceptible pause he promised to send a maid back to keep watch over her, and with a lingering pressure of hands and a look that plainly said he was but briefly denying himself a more ardent farewell, he hurried away through the banquet hall into the court.
She dared not run after to spy upon his departure. She could only wait, hoping in every throbbing nerve that the maid would prove to be the little one with the wart over her eye. And as she hoped she feared, lest all her frail barrier of cards should be swept away by a single breath.
If he should learn that the little dancer had visited her! If he should discover that she was playing a game with him!
CHAPTER X
A MAID AND A MESSAGE
The March hare would have been a feeble comparison for Billy Hill's madness if Robert Falconer could have seen him that Saturday morning, that same Saturday on which Arlee was essaying her daring rôle, for Billy Hill was sitting in the sun upon a camp stool, a white helmet upon his head, an easel before him, and upon the easel a square of blank canvas, and in Billy's left hand was a box of oils and in his right a brush. And the camp stool upon which Billy was stationed was planted directly before the small, high-arched door of the Kerissen palace and in plain view of the larger door a few feet to the right.
It had all followed upon acquaintance with the one-eyed man.