“No! Who from?”
“The mother. And Miss Deveen, who is staying with them, put in a postscript.”
“How did they know Sophie Chalk was here?”
“Through me. One wet afternoon I wrote a long epistle to Harry, telling him, amidst other items, that Sophie Chalk was here, turning some of our heads, especially Todhetley’s. Harry, like a flat, let Helen get hold of the letter, and she read it aloud, pro bono publico. There was nothing in it that I might not have written to Helen herself; but Mr. Harry won’t get another from me in a hurry. Sophie seems to have fallen to a discount with the mother and Miss Deveen.”
Bill Whitney did not know what I knew—the true story of the emeralds.
“And that’s why I did not go to the lunch to-day, Johnny. Who’s this?”
It was the scout. He came in to bring in a small parcel, daintily done up in white paper.
“Something for you, sir,” he said to me. “A boy has just left it.”
“It can’t be for me—that I know of. It looks like wedding-cake.”