She smiled very sweetly upon me, and I saw her eyes were dimmed with tears. Her lips moved, but in the first moments no sound escaped them. I had taken her by surprise, I think, for she had always regarded me as friend, and not as lover.
“I thank you for your kind promise to assist me in this hour of my need,” she answered at last in a voice that seemed to have strangely altered. “I know now that I enjoy your regard, although I—well, I must confess that I had no idea that, good friends that we have been all these years, you would end by really falling in love with me. You have, however, told me the truth, and a woman always respects a man for that. I know now that I have at least one firm and devoted friend.” And as she spoke her fingers closed upon my hand.
As I feared, I had presumed too far. I had no right to love her, I, a mere paid servant of the family, yet she had treated my confession with sweet dignity and womanly tact that so well became her, and cleverly turned my declaration of love into one of friendship.
“To serve me in this matter would be to imperil yourself,” she went on in deep seriousness after a moment’s pause. “My enemies hold my future in their hands. To me it is a matter of life or death.”
“I am prepared to undertake any risk for your sake,” I declared. “Only suggest a course, and I will adopt it instantly.”
“Ah, you are very good!” she cried. “How can I sufficiently thank you? In all the world you are the only friend I can really trust. Well, what I want you to do is this. Take the first train to London to-morrow and go to 98, Britten Street, Chelsea, where you will find a certain Frenchwoman named Lejeune. Tell her that I have sent you to implore her to tell me the truth; that if she fears to approach me direct you will act as intermediary; that if she withholds the secret it must result in my death—my death—you understand.”
“In your death!” I gasped, puzzled.
“Yes. I cannot face exposure. I would prefer death!” was her hoarse reply. “Tell that woman that Richard Keene has returned! She will know.” I watched her face and recognised how desperate she was. I had never before seen such a look in any woman’s eyes.
“And what else?” I asked mechanically.
“Nothing. All you have to do in order to save me is to get a written confession from that woman. If she refuses, as I fear she will, then my fate is sealed. The blow I have been dreading these past years will fall. I shall be crushed, and Lolita Sibberton will be but the memory of an unhappy woman who fell the victim of as foul and ingenious a plot as was ever conceived by the mind of man.” Her hands were clasped before her, and she shivered from head to foot. I saw that she was cold, and without a word wound about her bare neck my scarf that lay upon a chair.