As for Warner, he was intensely interested, excited, and perplexed. Here, apparently, in this old, stained pillowcase which Asticot had found in the private safe of Wildresse, were the first clews to Philippa's identity that anybody, excepting Wildresse, had ever heard of.
These photographs were without doubt photographs of Philippa as a child, two taken in Tours, one in Sofia.
And the girl's name was Philippa, too——
Suddenly it occurred to him that, according to Wildresse, Philippa had been left at his door as a Paris foundling—as an infant only a few weeks old. So Wildresse himself might have named her. Perhaps his wife had written Philippa's name on these pictures. And yet—how had Philippa come to be in the Bulgarian city of Sofia? Was it possible that Wildresse could ever have taken the child there?
He looked down at the toys, at the clothing. Had they belonged to Philippa as a child?
Between his room and Gray's there was a pretty sitting room. He put everything back into the pillowcase, went out into the corridor, found the sitting room door open and the room full of sunlight.
A maid, who sat sewing in the corridor, went to Philippa's room with a request from Warner that she dress and come to the sitting room.
Warner emptied the pillowcase on the center table, then, folding it, gave it to the maid, who returned to say that Philippa was dressed and would come immediately.
"Take this pillowcase to Madame la Comtesse," he explained. "Say to Madame that there is a device embroidered on the case, and that I should be infinitely obliged if Madame la Comtesse would be kind enough to search for a similar device among such volumes on the subject as she possesses."
The maid went away with the pillowcase, and a moment later Philippa appeared, fresh, dainty, smiling, an enchanting incarnation of youth and loveliness in her thin, white morning frock.