The Second Latchkey Part 28

Her mind grew clear. After a pause no longer than the drawing of a breath she was ready to rise to the situation Knight had created. In fact, she saw safety for him and herself, as well as a realistic surprise for Ruthven Smith. But the latter, rendered brave to act through fear of loss, was too quick for her.

"I beg your pardon! Before you go, may I have the pleasure of a nearer look at that beautiful enamel brooch of yours?"

It was Annesley's impulse to step back as without waiting for permission the narrow head, sleekly brushed and slightly bald at the top, bent over her laces. But she remembered herself in time and stood still. She dared not glance at Knight, to send him a message of encouragement, but she knew that for once even his resourcefulness had failed, and that he must be steeling himself to the brutal discovery of his secret.

Yet even then she did not guess what Ruthven Smith's plan was until the thing had happened. He peered at the brooch, which represented a bunch of grapes in small cabochon amethysts and leaves of green enamel. Adjusting his eyegla.s.ses, they slipped from his nose and fell on the lace of her fichu.

"Oh, how awkward of me! A thousand pardons!" he cried. Making a nervous grab for the gla.s.ses, which hung from a chain, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up her chain as well, and with a quick jerk of seeming inadvertence wrenched from its warm hiding-place a ring with a flash of brilliants and a glint of blue.

Annesley's heart had given one great throb and then missed a beat, for there had been an awful instant as the "plan" developed when she feared that the ring with the blue diamond might, after all her pains, have become entangled with the chain. If it had, the violence of the jerk might have brought it to light.

But she had accomplished her task well. She could afford to smile, though her lips trembled, as she saw the bird-of-prey look fade from Ruthven Smith's face and turn into bewildered humiliation.

Right was on his side; yet he had the air of a culprit, and some wild strain in Annesley's nature which had been asleep till that instant sang a song of triumph in the victory of her "plan" over his. How delighted Knight would be, and how amazed and grateful--grateful as he had been when she "stood by him" with the watchers!

As Ruthven Smith stammered apologies her eyes flashed to Knight's; but there was none of the defiant laughter she had expected, and felt bound to reproach him for later.

He was pale, and though his immense power of self-control kept him in check, Annesley shrank almost with horror from the fury of rage against Ruthven Smith which she read in her husband's gaze and the beating of the veins in his temples.

Terrified lest his anger should break out in words, she hurried on to say what she would have said before the sudden move by the jewel expert.

"Here is the sapphire ring you asked about, Knight," she said. "I was just going to take off this chain and give it to you to show to the Duke when----"

"When Mr. Ruthven Smith took an unwarrantable liberty," Knight finished the sentence icily.

"I--I meant nothing. Really, I can't tell you how I regret----" the wretched man stuttered. But Knight was without mercy.

"Pray don't try any further," he cut in. "My wife is not a figurine in a shop window to have her ornaments stared at and pawed over. You are an old friend of hers, Mr. Ruthven Smith, and you are my guest--or rather my friend Annesley-Seton's guest--therefore I will say no more. But in some countries where I have lived such an incident would have ended differently."

"Oh, _please_, Knight!" exclaimed Annesley, thankful that at least he had spoken his harsh words in so low a voice that no one outside their own group of three could hear. But she was shocked out of her brief exultation by his white rage and the depths revealed by the lightning flash of anger. Also she was sorry for Ruthven Smith, even while she resented the plot which it was evident he had come to carry out.

With unsteady hands she lifted the delicate chain over her hair and gave it to her husband.

"The ring is rather large for my finger. Here it is for you to show to the Duke," she reminded him.

"Thank you, Anita," he said. And she knew that he thanked her for more than what she gave him.

"I am a thousand times sorry," Ruthven Smith persisted. "More sorry than I can ever explain, or you will ever know."

"Indeed it was nothing," the girl comforted him in her soft young voice.

But she read in his words a hidden meaning, as she had read one into Knight's. She _did_ know that which he believed she would never know: the meaning of his act, and the effort it had cost to screw his courage to the sticking place.

Also, as the star sapphire with its sparkle of diamonds had flashed into sight, she had seemed to read his mind. She guessed he must be telling himself that his informant--the Countess, or some other--had mistaken one blue stone for another.

"Let's go and join Constance and the d.u.c.h.ess," she went on, quietly.

"They're looking at some lovely things you will like to see. And you must forget that Knight was cross. He has lived in wild places, and he has a hot temper."

"I deserved what I got, I'm afraid," murmured Ruthven Smith.

"After all, nothing exciting seems likely to happen to-night in this room, in spite of the Countess's prophecy," said Constance. "Perhaps it may be to-morrow or Monday."

"I hope nothing more exciting will happen then than to-night!" Annesley exclaimed, with a kindly glance at her companion. She pitied him, but she pitied herself more, for by and by she and Knight would have to talk this thing out together.

For the first time she dreaded the moment of being alone with her husband. There was a stain of clay on the feet of her idol, and though she had helped him to hide it from other eyes, nothing could be right between them again until she had told him what she thought--until he had promised to make rest.i.tution somehow of the thing he should never have possessed.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SECRET

Knight and Annesley had a suite of rooms on the ground floor in what was known as "the new wing" at Valley House. On the floor above were the rooms occupied by Lord and Lady Annesley-Seton.

This wing was a dreadful anachronism, shocking to architects, for it had been tacked on to the house in the eighteenth century by some member of the family who had made the "grand tour" and fallen in love with Italy.

Seeing no reason why a cla.s.sic addition with a high-pillared loggia should be unsuitable to a house in England built in Elizabethan and Jacobean days, he had made it.

Fortunately it was so situated as not to be seen from the front of the building, or anywhere else except from the one side which it deformed; and there a more artistic grandson had hidden the abortion as much as possible by planting a grove of beautiful stone-pines.

As for the wing itself, the interior was the most "liveable" part of the house, and with the modern improvements put in to please the American bride before her fortune vanished, it had become charming within.

Annesley's bedroom and her husband's adjoining had long windows opening out on the loggia and looking between tall, straight trunks of umbrella pines toward the distant sea.

It was late before she could slip away to her own quarters, for she had been wanted for bridge, an amus.e.m.e.nt which she secretly thought the last refuge for the mentally dest.i.tute. She had told her maid not to sit up; and she was thankful to close the door of the small corridor or vestibule which led into the suite, knowing that until Knight came she would be alone.

She wanted him to come, and meant to wait (it did not matter how long) until they could have that talk she wished for yet dreaded intensely.

Meanwhile, however, it was good to have a few minutes in which to compose her mind, to decide whether she should begin, or expect Knight to do so; and how she could frankly let him see her state of mind without seeming too harsh, too relentless, to the man who had given her happiness with both hands--the only real happiness she had ever known.

She sat for a while in the boudoir, thinking that Knight might come soon, before she began to undress. There was a dying glow of coal and logs in the fireplace, but staring into the rosy ma.s.s brought no inspiration. She could not concentrate her thoughts on the scene which must presently be enacted; they would go straggling wearily to other scenes already acted, even as far back as that hour at the Savoy when a young man who looked to her like the hero of a novel begged to sit at her table.

He still seemed as much as ever like the hero of a novel in which he had splendidly made her the heroine; but it was not a pleasant chapter she had to read now. It reminded her too intensely of the mystery surrounding the hero, and forced her to realize that stories of real life have not always happy endings.

"But ours must!" she said to herself, springing up, unable to rest.

"Nothing can break our love; and while we have that we have everything!"

She could no longer sit still, and going into her bedroom she peeped through the door into Knight's room beyond. It was dark, as she expected to find it; for she had been almost sure that she would have heard him if he had entered the vestibule.

Returning to her own rooms, she pulled back the sea-blue curtains which covered the large window looking on to the loggia. The sky was silver-white with moonlight between the black stems of the tall pines, and a flood of radiance poured into the room. It was so beautiful and bright, bringing with it so heavenly a sense of peace, that the girl could not bear to draw the curtains again. She began slowly to undress by moonlight and the faint red glow in the fireplace.

Her first act was to recover the blue diamond ring and to drop it with shrinking fingers into the jewel-case on her dressing table.

Taking off her dinner frock, she put on a white silk gown which turned her into a pale spirit flitting hither and thither in the silver dusk.

Still Knight had not come. She pulled out the four great tortoise-sh.e.l.l pins which held up her hair, and let it tumble over her shoulders. As she began to twist it into one heavy plait, she walked to the window and stood looking out.

It seemed to her that the black trunks and outstretched branches of the trees were like prison bars across the moonlight. She wished she had not had that thought, but as it persisted, a figure moved behind the bars, the figure of a man.

At first she was startled, for it was very late, long after one o'clock; but as the man came nearer, she recognized him, although the light was at his back. It was Knight; and as though her thought called to him, he stopped suddenly, pausing on the lawn not far from the loggia. She could not see his face, but it seemed that he was staring straight up at her window.

"He has been walking in the moonlight, thinking things over just as I have in here!" the girl told herself. Surely he could see her! But no, he turned, and was striding away with his head down, when she knocked sharply and impulsively on the pane.