'Well, he paints very well.'
'Very well indeed, I dare say.' She got up. 'I am going to leave you to-night, Zoe. I want to go to my own room. I have things to write. You don't mind?'
'My dear child, mind! Of course, one would rather have your company. But since you must leave me'—she sank back in her chair with a sigh. 'Give me that book, dear—if you please—the French novel. When one has been married one can read French novels without trying to conceal the fact. They are mostly wicked, and sometimes witty. Not always. Good-night, dear. I shall not expect you back this evening.'
Armorel, in her own room, opened the manuscript book of poems which Archie had given her, and found—the very last of all—the lines which she had remembered. She laid the precious autograph beside Effie's poem. Word for word—comma for comma—they were exactly the same. There was not the slightest difference. And again Armorel thought of the two pictures.
Then she thought of the little dainty volume in white parchment containing the Second Series of 'Voice and Echo, by Alec Feilding.' She had tossed it aside, impatient with the man, when Zoe gave it to her. Now she looked for it, and found it after a little search. She opened it side by side with Effie's manuscript book. Presently she found the page in Effie's book which corresponded with the first page of the printed volume. There were about thirty or forty poems in the little book: in the manuscript book there were double that number; but the same poems followed each other one after the other in the same order, and without the difference of a single word, both in book and manuscript.
This discovery justifies my remarks about the common coincidences of daily life.
Again Armorel remembered that Zoe possessed another volume—the First Series of 'Voice and Echo, by Alec Feilding.' It was lying—she had seen it in the afternoon—in the drawing-room. She went in search of it, and returned without waking her companion, who had apparently fallen asleep over her novel.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Elstree was not sleeping. She was broad awake, but she was curious. She desired to know what it all meant: why Armorel was suddenly struck with hardness, why her cheek burned, and her eyes flashed; and what she wanted in the drawing-room. She perceived that Armorel had come in search of Alec's first volume of verse. Oh! Alec's first volume of verse. Now—what might Armorel want with that book?
At the end of March it is light at about half-past five. Everybody is then in their soundest sleep. But at that hour Mrs. Elstree came softly out of her bedroom, wrapped in a dressing-gown, her feet in soft slippers of white wool, and looked at the books and papers on the table in Armorel's room. There was a manuscript volume of verse, professing to be by one Effie Wilmot. There were also two printed little volumes, bound in white-and-gold, containing verses by one Alec Feilding. Strange and wonderful! The verses in both books were exactly the same! Mrs. Elstree returned to bed, thoughtful.