Mrs Hargrave roused herself from her reverie, and took up the letter for the second time. It was from an intimate acquaintance, and the envelope bore the Eastbourne post-mark. Again she read that particular paragraph which had so perturbed her.
“I have at last succeeded in meeting your Miss Clandon at a garden-party. I made myself as pleasant as I could, and you know I can make myself pretty well liked when I try. I think she has taken a fancy to me, and that we shall be great friends presently. I am going to tea with her to-morrow, and will let you know if I can get anything definite out of her.
“She is twenty-two, and certainly a lovely girl, also a very charming one. I introduced Mr Rossett’s name, of course, and she just looked a little shy. But I could not get her to say much, only this, that he is coming down to Eastbourne directly, and that he has just secured an important appointment abroad, at the British Embassy in Spain.
“She wears no engagement ring, so they are not publicly betrothed. But I am sure there is a very good understanding between them.”
The widow threw the letter down on her lap, with a fierce exclamation.
“Twenty-two, and a lovely girl,” she muttered angrily. “Some pink and white beauty, I suppose, immature, knowing nothing of life. And these are the women who catch men of the world with their youth and innocence.”
Her face grew hard, she looked almost plain, and for the moment her thirty years showed themselves unmistakably.
She tore the offending note into fragments, and threw them into a dainty little waste-paper basket—everything about the flat was dainty.
“But I will get even with Mr Guy Rossett before long,” she cried vindictively, as she returned to her seat.
It was somewhere about ten o’clock in the morning when she indulged in these bitter reflections, when she had to admit, in the face of that letter, that her ambitious schemes had gone astray.
At the same hour, a tall and corpulent gentleman, attired in an elegant morning coat and silk hat, descended the steps of his house at Walton, stepped into the Rolls-Royce car waiting for him, drove to the station, and took the train to London.
He was known in his business, and in the neighbourhood, as Mr Jackson, although his foreign appearance and swarthy complexion gave the direct lie to his English name.