"Mrs. Petre!" she gasped, stepping back from me, her face pale as death in an instant. "That woman!"
"Yes, that woman, Phrida. Who is she—what is she?"
"Please don't ask me, Teddy," my love cried in distress, covering her pretty face with her hands and bursting suddenly into tears.
"But I must, Phrida—I must, for my own peace of mind," I said.
"Why? Do you know the woman?"
"I met her last night," I explained. "I delivered to her a note which my friend Digby had entrusted to me."
"I thought your friend had disappeared?" she said quickly.
"It was given to me before his flight," was my response. "I fulfilled a confidential mission with which he entrusted me. And—and I met her. She knows you—isn't that so?"
I stood with my eyes full upon the white face of the woman I loved, surveying her coldly and critically, so full of black suspicion. Was my heart at that moment wholly hers? In imagination, place yourself, my reader, in a similar position. Put before yourself the problem with which, at that second, I found myself face to face.
I loved Phrida, and yet had I not obtained proof positive of her clandestine visit to my friend on that fateful night? Were her finger-prints not upon the little glass-topped specimen-table in his room?