She returned to the house in the country.
In the middle of the third night, the telephone beside her pillow gave a buzz, more terrifying than a shout of fire, an earthquake, a knife at the throat. Brantome was speaking. Parr had returned to the house in Greenwich Village. Lawrence Teck had sailed secretly, that day, for Africa.
She replaced the receiver on the hook, rested her head on her hands, and remained thus for a long while. In the end she formed the words:
"That woman."
She was thinking of "the infallible clairvoyant."
PART III
CHAPTER XLVIII
In the early morning, while the trees round the house were still full of mist, Lilla, in her sitting room, at the tall Venetian desk of green and gold lacquer, redrafted for the twentieth time the message that she wanted to send after Lawrence Teck by wireless. The rich scintillations from the polished surfaces before her enveloped her distracted countenance in a new, greenish pallor, as she traced, now heavily, now very faintly, the words:
"If you knew what you've done——"