He spoke the words mechanically, quite stunned by the overwhelming fact that this audacious photographic person dared to write to his wife. Miss Silver passed him, placed the twisted paper on one of the inlaid tables, and left the room with a triumphant light in her deriding-black eyes.
"I have trumped my first trick," Sybilla thought, as she walked away, "and I fancy the game will be all my own shortly. Sir Everard will open and read Mr. Parmalee's little billet-doux the instant he is alone."
But just here Sybilla was mistaken. Sir Everard did not open the tempting twisted note. He glanced at it once as it lay on the table, but he made no attempt to take it.
"She will show it to me when she awakes," he said, with compressed lips, "and then I will have this impertinent Yankee kicked from the house."
He sat beside her, watching her while she slept, with a face quite colorless between conflicting love and torturing doubt.
Nearly an hour passed before Harriet awoke. The great dark eyes opened in wide surprise at sight of that pale, intense face bending so devotedly over her.
"You here, Everard?" she said. "How long have I been asleep? How long have you been here?"
"Over an hour, Harrie."
"So long? I had no idea of going asleep when I lay down; but my head ached with a dull, hopeless pain, and—What is that?"
She had caught sight of the note lying on the table.