"It's my locket--there are my initials--my portrait inside; they are a pair--only I'm in one and he's in the other. He told me that mine should never leave him; that if it wasn't about his neck, it would always be somewhere about his person; how came it to be there, where that woman said it was? Is this the something which I felt was going to happen? What does it mean? Is it a message? From whom?--from him? I feel--I feel--Sydney, where are you?"
She swung suddenly round, gazing round the brightly lighted room with startled, staring eyes, as if she did not know for what she was looking. Then she caught sight of something which was lying on the floor almost at her feet.
"What's that?" She picked it up. "Where did that come from? Surely it was not there just now; what--what does it all mean?"
It was an envelope which she had picked up from the carpet; she was holding it gingerly between her finger and thumb as if it were some dangerous thing.
"What's written on it? 'Sydney Beaton's card'--what! There's something inside it." Tearing it open, she took out what it contained. "It's a playing-card, the ace of clubs. What does it mean?"
CHAPTER XIII
[The Alcove]
The ball was a great success, it was generally admitted. Miss Forster could have danced each number on the programme with half a dozen different partners if she had chosen. She danced with Mr. Noel Draycott; when it came to sitting out, he found her manner a little disconcerting. He was of the fatuous type of young man, a better dancer than conversationalist. He had a sort of cut-and-dried routine on such occasions, saying the same things, as much as possible, to each of his partners in turn. New ideas would not come to him quickly, especially when he was talking to women; if they would not keep to the subject which he felt was appropriate to the occasion, he preferred not to talk at all.
Miss Forster treated him in that respect quite badly. When he tried to make one of his orthodox remarks, which were meant to be compliments, she ignored him utterly. She not only said things which worried him--to him it always was a labour to find an answer to a remark that was unexpected--she asked him questions which puzzled him still more, questions which he felt that she had no right to ask; particularly of a man in the middle of a dance.
When he had quitted her, before seeking his next partner, he unburdened himself to his friend, Anthony Dodwell.