“If I am lucky, too.”
“And I suppose Yootha with you? Oh! but I needn’t ask,” she ended with a malicious little laugh.
The luncheon came to an end just then, which was as well, for the two women were each awaiting an opportunity to deal the other metaphorically a blow between the eyes. For weeks past their hatred had been smoldering. To-day it had come near to bursting into flame.
When Cora met Yootha that afternoon, she at once told her of her passage-of-arms at lunch with Jessica Robertson, and of Jessica’s hardly veiled sneer at their friendship.
“Why let that annoy you, Cora dear?” Yootha exclaimed. “Heaven knows why the woman dislikes you so, or why she dislikes me, as I know she does. I expect the truth is she has heard that we are trying to find out who she is. And I mean to go on trying, until I do find out.”
“And I am with you. I am as certain as that I am standing here that she is an impostor of some sort, though up to the present she and her friends, Stapleton and La Planta, have been clever enough to hide the truth. Has it never struck you as strange, Yootha, that not a word got into the papers about the theft of her jewelry and things, though all one’s friends knew about it? What has made me think of that now is that I was told this morning by a friend of mine who writes or edits, or does something for some paper—no, you don’t know him—that Stapleton and Jessica Robertson both moved heaven and earth to prevent the affair being reported in the press.”
“But why?”
“Exactly—but why? I was wondering if she could have some reason for not wanting her name to get into the papers, but as one sees it in all the ‘social columns’ every day——”
“That may have been the reason, nevertheless. The jewelry, et cetera, were, if you remember, apparently stolen by one of her guests that night, and possibly she suspects one of them and is afraid of the scandal which would follow if he, or she, were convicted of the theft. Indeed, I can’t think what other motive she can have had for not wanting anything to be said in the papers about the crime.”
“I wonder,” Cora said thoughtfully.