She went on playing from Chopin and Ommony did not notice the inflection of her voice; he was listening to the piano’s overtones, vaguely displeased when she closed the piano without finishing the nocturne.
“I was at Tilgaun seven months ago,” she said. “Colin” (that was her husband) “had to go to Burma, so I went to Darjiling. I heard of the Marmaduke Mission, and grew curious. I wrote, and Miss Sanburn kindly invited me to come and stay with her. The most delightful place. Please pass me a cigarette.”
“Did Hannah mention me?” asked Ommony.
“Indeed she did. You seem to be her beau ideal; and funnily enough she said you, and the Lama Tsiang Samdup must have been twin brothers in a former incarnation! She told me you and he have never met each other, although you are co-trustees with her under Marmaduke’s will. It sounds like Gilbert and Sullivan. I didn’t see the Lama, but I did meet some one else who is quite as interesting.”
McGregor crossed his legs and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“How well do you know Miss Sanburn?” asked Mrs. Cornock-Campbell at the end of a minute’s silence. She was watching Diana, stretched out on the bearskin, hunting gloriously in a dream-Valhalla. If she saw Ommony’s face it was through the corner of one eye.
“Oh, as well as a man can ever hope to know a very unusual woman,” said Ommony.
“That doesn’t go deep—does it! I admit I suspected you at first. Then I remembered how long I have known you and—well—you’re unorthodox, and you’re a rebel, but—I couldn’t imagine you leaving a child nameless.”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked Ommony.
“So I suspected Marmaduke—naturally. But all sorts of dates and circumstances turned up quite casually, which eliminated him. I was at Tilgaun a whole month before I was quite sure that Miss Sanburn is not a mother. I was almost disappointed! She is such a dear—I admire her so much—that it would have given me a selfish satisfaction to know such an abysmal secret, and to keep it even on a death-bed! However, the child is not hers. She calls her an adopted daughter, though I doubt that there are any legal papers. The girl is white. She’s about twenty. The strangest part is this: that the girl disappears at intervals.”