“I must write to him,” said Bridget.
She went into her boudoir, wrote the note, and gave it to Valentine.
“By the way, do you know this secretary?” she said carelessly. “Have you seen him at the theater?”
“No, I haven’t. He must be a new one,” said Valentine.
“Tell him to tell the manager how sorry I am, and that I’ll tell him all about it at the theater to-night.”
Valentine went downstairs again; Bridget went to the piano and did two or three voice exercises. They must have drowned the noise of the shutting of the house-door, for Ralph did not hear it. The minutes passed.
He felt somewhat uncomfortable. This business seemed to him rather queer—this secretary they did not know, this request for the jewels looked to him uncommonly like a trap of some sort.
Then he was reassured by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. They went to the door of the boudoir.
“Valentine,” he said to himself. “There was nothing in my fancies. The man has gone.”
But of a sudden the playing stopped short in the middle of a run. Evidently the actress jumped up so suddenly as to upset the piano stool, for it banged on the floor. She said in an uneasy voice: