“Twelve o’clock, when the hall door opened and Philippa Burton came out. I watched her down the road from my carriage window. And now,” she continued, half rising, “having done my duty by you, for which I shall get, as I expected, little thanks, I shall go straight to the Neverns. Gaby and fool as God knows Sammy Nevern to be, I have a respect for his parents, and therefore——”
Again Cecily lost the thread of Lady Wilmot’s remarks, continued during the occupation of hunting for a feather boa. Above the heads of the two unconscious women in the room, the eyes of the other two met. In Philippa’s there was agonized supplication.
Cecily never knew what prompted her next words. They rose to her lips fluently, and apparently without volition. She was even startled as she heard herself give them utterance.
“I have let you go on, Lady Wilmot,” she said in a voice drained of all expression, “though you did not see that Miss Burton was in the room.”
Lady Wilmot turned as though a fog-signal had gone off under her chair. Rose sprang to her feet, and moved nearer to Cecily.
“When I tell you that Miss Burton was here the other night at my request,” Cecily went on in the same tone, “you will understand that you have made a grave mistake.”
The faintest flicker of eyelashes was the only sign of surprise which Rose allowed herself. She stood and waited, with an impassive countenance, while Lady Wilmot gasped.
“At your request?” she stammered.
“Yes. Why not?” returned Cecily, her mind still working, as it seemed, independently of her. “Miss Burton, as you know, was my husband’s secretary up to the time we closed the flat. A few days ago he wrote to me from Aldeburgh about a manuscript which he thought I had taken abroad with me. I happened to know it was here. Naturally, as Miss Burton knew all about his papers, I wrote to her to come and find it. I don’t know why she should have chosen the late hour you mention, certainly. That is her own affair. Probably she was busy earlier. In any case, my husband was not in the flat at the time. As I tell you, he wrote to me from Aldeburgh.”
Lady Wilmot finished patting her boa, and readjusted her veil, with an assumption of calmness which Rose secretly admired.