"Richard Pringle."
This was the note which Mrs. Davenport handed Thomas Blake as she stood over him in her fresh widow's weeds the night after her husband's death.
CHAPTER IX.
["WHICH OF US IS MAD?"]
The morning after the interview between Mrs. Davenport and Tom Blake in Jermyn Street, there were paragraphs about Mr. Davenport's death in the daily papers. These paragraphs were almost colourless, and barely suggested any cause for uneasiness. They all wound up by saying that the inquest would be held next day.
That afternoon Richard Pringle called on chance at the house in Jermyn Street, and found Mrs. Davenport at home. She received him in a dreamy, half-conscious way, and answered listlessly the common-place questions he put to her. Before seeing her he had made up his mind not to refer to the scene which had taken place between them yesterday. He was firmly convinced she would not give him her full confidence, and that to seek to get at the bottom of the affair would be only to court obstruction. From her manner he assumed she wished nothing to be said of what had taken place in the Paultons' drawing-room at Dulwich. He began by trying to prepare her for the inquest. She shuddered slightly when he used that word, and yet seemed but indifferently alive to the importance of the situation. She answered in monosyllables, and contented herself mostly with merely bowing her head in token that she attended to what he said.
No material advantage could be gained by speaking of the former interview between them. He had drawn his own conclusions from it, and it was abundantly clear to him she wished that interview ignored. Now that he was once more under the spell of her presence, he felt his interest in her case rekindle, and the charm of her beauty reasserting itself.
One thing, however, must be spoken of. It was absolutely necessary he should say something of the note he had written her last evening. He waited for a pause, or rather caused a pause in the conversation, for she volunteered nothing.
"Having found this Jermyn Street address in the pocket-book of Mr. Davenport, I sent a few lines to you yesterday evening in the hope they might reach you. Did you get them?"
This question seemed to arouse her attention. She clasped her hands in her lap, and, turning her face fully towards him, answered: