My teeth met and clenched themselves hard. The woman who had stolen my love held Ernest Cameron in her toils. He believed that her presence at the tables brought him good fortune. And yet I loved him so—better than life! The old man's words brought to my mind a flood of recollections belonging to the idyllic days of a love now dead.
Ah! if we had married, I would have been a much better woman, I reflected bitterly. To love is such a very different thing from a desire to be beloved. To love is woman's nature—to be beloved is the consequence of her having properly exercised and controlled that nature. To love is woman's duty—to be beloved is her reward.
But where was my reward?
CHAPTER XVIII
CREATES ANOTHER PROBLEM
The queer-looking old man sitting there before me, fidgeting slightly in his chair, was indeed a very grotesque figure. From what he had said, I could no longer doubt that he was aware of the whole of the curious circumstances at Nice, and was likewise well acquainted with the manner in which my relations with Ernest had been broken off.
How he had accomplished his manifestly clever espionage in Nice I knew not. Certainly I had never noticed his presence, either in Nice or in the Rooms at Monte Carlo. Besides, if he had presented himself at the bureau of the Casino in such clothes as he wore at that moment he would have been refused admission. A man is not allowed to enter if his trousers are turned up in wet weather, while the cycling tourist in knickerbockers is promptly shown the door by the semi-military janitors. Yet from words he had let drop, he showed himself intimate with all the features of the play of both Ulrica and Ernest Cameron, and must have been present in the crowd around the table.
The mystery surrounding the affair increased each moment. And now this dwarfed old man, of whose name I was unaware, desired me to combine my efforts with his.
With that end in view he settled to talk with me seriously, pointing out that poor Reggie had been murdered secretly, and that it was my duty to discover the truth, and bring his assassin to justice. I admitted this, of course, but failed entirely to see what connection the old fellow could have with it. To me, in my ignorance of the truth, he appeared to have entered into a matter which did not in the least concern him.
"From what I have already told the signorina, I think she will be convinced that our interests are really identical," he said presently, after we had been talking some time. "My own inquiries have been independent of yours, but the result has been the same. To put it plainly, neither of us has discovered any clue whatsoever. Is not that the truth?"