“Did you come back with Lady Thorold?” I asked—why, I hardly knew—when we had talked for some moments.
“Mais, oui,” she exclaimed. “We were together in Mentone, when I read in a newspaper about this dreadful affair. I had just heard from a friend here that Mademoiselle Vera was staying at the Grand Hotel, so I told Lady Thorold. She was désolée at the news about Sir Charles—pauvre homme—and said she must return at once to see him, and asked me if I would come with her. So I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ And here I am. Do you remember our evening together at the ball in Monte Carlo?” she ended, with a rippling, silvery laugh.
“Where are you staying?” Faulkner asked.
“I? At the Piccadilly Hotel. You must come to supper with me there. What night will you come?”
We made some excuse for not arranging definitely what night we would have supper with her, and I laughed as I thought of the two louis I had given the girl as a bribe to remove her mask, and of the sum I had afterwards paid her to take me to Vera. And now she was staying at the Piccadilly Hotel, and giving supper parties—the girl whom I had once believed to be Lady Thorold’s maid!
How strangely wags the world to-day!
As we all three emerged into Burlington Gardens, boys came rushing past with the latest edition of an evening paper.
“Ah, gran’ Dieu!” she cried, as she caught sight of the contents bills. For this was what we read on them—
HOUGHTON PARK.
SACKS OF GOLD DISCOVERED.