In such a mood I sat thinking and pondering until we glided into the great echoing station of Carlisle. Then I descended, bought a paper, and tried to read as the portion of the train in which I sat continued its way eastward towards Edinburgh. To concentrate my mind upon a printed page was, however, impossible. I recollected those strange, ominous words of the Countess when we had parted in the Saints’ Garden, and somehow felt convinced that her position was impregnable.
Keene had distinctly declared that if Marigold failed to tell the truth, then my love must fall a victim. Why—and how? All was so mysterious, so utterly inscrutable, so bewildering that the enigma admitted of no solution.
I could not disguise the fact from myself that Lolita had gone north purposely to avoid the unwelcome stranger who had so mysteriously returned, and I now intended at all hazards to obtain from her some fact concerning the conspiracy into which he seemed to have entered.
The strange incident in that lonely farmhouse and the attack upon Marie Lejeune were again facts which combined to show what a wide-spread plot was in progress—a plot the motive of which was still enshrouded in mystery, but of which the victim was undoubtedly to be none other than my well-beloved.
Lolita, who was staying with her aunt, the Dowager Lady Casterton, at the Royal Hotel, in Princes Street, sprang quickly to her feet when, shortly before dinner, the waiter ushered me into their private sitting-room. Fortunately her aunt was still in her room, and we were therefore alone.
“Willoughby!” she gasped springing forward to me breathlessly. “You! Whatever brings you here—what has happened at Sibberton?”
“Nothing,” I replied in order to set her at ease. “Or rather nothing in particular. Every one is very well, and the house-party has assumed its usual gaiety.”
“Marigold is still at home?” she inquired, as though her first thought was of her brother’s wife. I answered in the affirmative, and then slowly and with reverence raised her slim white hand to my lips. She allowed me to kiss her fingers in homage, smiling sweetly upon me the while.
She was in a magnificent dinner-dress of black net shimmering with sequins—a gown the very simplicity of which rendered it graceful, charming, and the essence of good taste. At her throat was a single row of large pearls, but she wore no other ornament. She always dressed artistically and in the latest mode, and surely her gown was exactly suited to the hotel table d’hôte.
I had only just had time to go to my room, change, and seek her, for I had not notified her of my coming in order that she should have no chance of avoiding me. Yet her manner of greeting was as though my presence gave her the utmost pleasure. Her cheeks flushed as I pressed her fingers to my lips, and I knew that her heart, like mine, beat quickly with the passion of affection.