"What would you have, Eveena? Am I to deal unjustly that I may seem just? That course steers straight to disaster. And, had you been in fault, could I humble you in other eyes?"
"If I feel hurt by any mark of your displeasure, or humbled that it should be known to my equals in your own household," she replied, "it is time I were deprived of the privileges that have rendered me so overweening."
My answer was intercepted by the sound of an electric bell or miniature gong, and a slip of tafroo fell upon the desk. The first words were in that vocal character which I had mastered, and came from Esmo.
"Hysterical folly," he had said. "Mountain air might be fatal; and clear nights are dangerously cold for more than yourselves."
"What does he mean?" I asked, as I read out a formula more studiously occult than those of the Pharmacopoeia.
"That I am unpardonably silly, and that you must not dream of going back to your vessel. The last words, I suppose, warn you how carefully in such a household you need to guard the secrets of the Starlight."
"Well, and what is this in the stylic writing?"
Eveena glanced over it and coloured painfully, the tears gathering in her eyes.
"That," she said, pointing to the first cipher, "is my mother's signature."
"Then," I said, "it is meant for you, not for me."