“I beg your pardon, Miss Grahame,” he said, “if I betray any impertinent curiosity, but I am desirous of knowing whether you are acquainted with this handkerchief?”
She looked at it. In a corner, embroidered, were the initials “H. G.” It was her own, and one of value. She smiled.
“Indeed,” she answered, “I ought to know it well, Mr. Vane.”
“I found it beneath a tree, there,” he added, pointing to the thicket in which she had parted with Hugh Riversdale.
She had, no doubt, dropped it on leaving Hugh the night before. She felt an acute pain run through her brain, as she saw in what direction his finger pointed, and that as he spoke his eyes were absolutely glaring upon her. She detected, in an instant, how much depended upon her answer. Controlling, as before, with a remarkable exertion of self-will, the expression of her features, she assumed an air of indifference, and flinging the handkerchief into the stream, upon the brink of which she was standing, she answered—
“Possibly; it is one I some time since gave to my maid, Chayter.”
Lester was unable to utter a word in reply; he was baffled. He watched the handkerchief float away, and he said to himself—
“Yet it was you who stood last night in the thicket along with the fellow who felled me to the earth. Despite this check, I will proye it, and to you.”