"Finished, Den?"
"Yes. I think I've forgotten something, though." Denise was driven home, answering questions, but not speaking, frightened, and too visibly ill at ease.
"H'm!" said Sir Cyril to himself.
He went to his study to write, stayed there until the luncheon gong rang, came out to find the first arrivals in the morning-room, and to see Denise, her colour high, hurrying in.
"I'm so sorry I'm late. I had to run over to the Vicarage to give the vicaress some books for her club. I forgot them this morning."
Denise had been to the bank, extracted two hundred pounds in notes from a beaming manager. She came in a little nervously, looking aside at Sir Cyril. The big man would have made a good detective. His hard eyes narrowed a little, his big chin shot out. Denise was not in the least likely to have remembered the books for the vicar's wife without some other motive. Without the faintest suspicion of Denise in his mind, he summed it all up.
"That Carteret woman's worried the girl; she went to get her the money." After all, the Carteret woman had been once full of devotion; Denise had heaps of money; but it must not go too far. Cyril Blakeney was a man who walked straight to his goal. He meant to ask Denise how much she had sent, to warn her against being bled.
He ate his plainly-cooked luncheon, almost in silence. A thorough Englishman, eating large helpings of roast beef and vegetables, topped up by a steamed pudding and cheese. A mouthful of something highly flavoured had no attractions for Cyril Blakeney.
Denise, picking at a cutlet, watched him, grew brighter as she began to feel certain that she had managed everything so well. She would have her own money soon, send on the advance to Esmé.
Denise pulled out the one foot she had dabbled into the Slough of Despond. She walked gaily again in the sunshine on firm ground.