She shook her head.
I did not suspect—nay, I could not bring myself to believe—that Edward Craig had fallen by her hand. Yet the facts were strange—amazingly strange—and her demeanour was stranger still.
We had tea together. She poured it out, and handed it to me daintily, with a sweet smile upon her lips. Then after a further chat, she drew on her long gloves, settled her skirts and prepared to leave.
"A letter addressed to the Poste Restante at Versailles will always find me," she said, in reply to my request for an address. "I use the name Elise Leblanc."
I made a rapid note of it upon my shirt-cuff, and having paid the bill, we descended, and walked together, through the busy streets of Norwich, to the Thorpe Station, where I saw her into the evening express for London.
"Au revoir, M'sieu' Vidal," she said, as she held my hand, before entering the first-class compartment. "Do heed my warning, I beg of you. Do not further imperil yourself. Will you?"
"I cannot promise," I replied with a smile.
"But you must not persist—or something will most surely happen," she declared. "Au revoir! If we meet again it must be in the strictest secrecy. My uncle must never know."
"Au revoir!" I said as the porter closed the door, and next moment the train moved off.
I saw her face smiling, and a white-gloved hand waving at the window, and then "The Nightingale" had gone.