"I know he does, and that you love him. My dear, if I could have won you I should not have stayed away all these months; but I owed you that--and I tried to play the game."
"Colling," she answered, in a burst of warmth and kindliness, "I never liked you so much as I do now, Colling. I think it is because I feel I can lean upon you and trust you----"
"Poor little b.u.t.terfly!" he answered; and there were tears in the eyes of this hardened man of fashion, tears which sprang to his eyes in spite of himself and showed the deep tenderness beneath.
"But, Colling," Peggy went on anxiously, "have we any chance at all of proving it against her? She has been awfully clever about it all, hasn"t she?"
Collingwood shook his head rather hopelessly. "I doubt if we have any chance at all," he said. "But there is just one thing--I have just remembered it. I have a sort of clue, and that is one which d.i.c.ky has just given me when he was here a few minutes ago."
"Oh! d.i.c.ky!" Peggy said, with a wan little smile.
"Well," Collingwood resumed, "of course no one would call d.i.c.ky intellectual and that, but I really think there is something in what he said this time. I"ll tell you. He has consulted an American handwriting expert about the letters, and he says that they are the work of some one who can write with the left hand. I know that I can"t write with my left hand. But what about Alice?"
"I don"t know," Peggy answered slowly; "I have never heard of her doing so."
"Or using it more than the ordinary?" Collingwood continued.
"Yes--stay," Peggy replied eagerly. "She is ever so good with it at billiards."
Collingwood laughed.
"Oh, don"t laugh, Colling!" she continued--"please don"t laugh at me--but I remember she did tell me--yes--that she broke her right arm sleighing when she was a girl, and that she is almost ambidextrous. It has only just come back to me. She told me many years ago."
Collingwood jumped up from the table alert and excited.
"That is something--by Jove! it is," he cried. "Tell me, where is she?"
"She has only gone upstairs for a moment," Peggy said. "I am expecting her down every moment."
"By the way, Peggy," Collingwood asked, "where does she write her letters and things when she is here with you?"
"She always writes there," Peggy answered, pointing to the table, "where you have been sitting."
"Look here," Collingwood said decisively, "when she comes, leave her alone with me. I"ll do what I can. I"ll tackle her. You had better not be here at all."
"But, Colling, can"t I help?" Peggy asked. "I think I might be of use, though of course it will be dreadfully unpleasant. But, for my own sake, I must stick at nothing now."
"No, Peggy," he replied firmly. "I feel I can manage this much better myself. Look here--you go out upon the terrace again. I will just come with you and settle you in your chair--how tired you look!--and then a _mauvais quart d"heure_ for Alice, if she ever had one in her life."
"But it may not be true after all," Peggy said, as they walked together towards the long windows.
He shook his head at that. "It must be true," he said; "no one else could have done it; and what you have just told me, and what d.i.c.ky said, make it conclusive to my mind."
They pa.s.sed behind the curtains together, and there was the sound of a chair being moved over the tessellated floor.
THE LAST CHAPTER
Lady Attwill was upstairs in her bedroom.
It was very large, and luxuriously furnished, with Chippendale chairs and Adams ceiling, while the walls were covered with a paper of white upon which, here and there, tiny apple blossoms of pink and gra.s.s-green were indicated.
Despite its size, the room felt close, and Alice Attwill had thrown open all the windows to the summer afternoon.
The cooler air, scented with flowers, poured into the place, but she seemed to notice nothing of it.
She walked up and down the room with her feline grace--for this was natural to her, and no careful pose or cultivated mannerism. Her lovely head was bent a little forward as she walked, and the hands which were clasped behind her slim waist folded and unfolded themselves nervously.
The face itself was very white, the eyes glistened, the lips twitched nervously, and there was about her an atmosphere of terror.
She made it herself, this beautiful woman walking up and down a beautiful room; but fear there was in that quiet place, and it did not come in there from the open windows, but radiated out from a guilty mind and a wildly pulsating heart. Every now and again, as she walked up and down, Alice Attwill moistened her lips with her tongue and glanced at the travelling-clock covered with red leather which stood upon the mantlepiece.
At last she stopped with one thoughtful glance at the clock.
"It"ll be all right now," she said to herself. "I am sure they must be beginning to suspect me. Fool that I was! Why, every novel and almost every play has this question of the blotting-book in it. It is such a simple device, and yet in real life how often it _does_ happen! Here am I confronted with the worst crisis in my whole life, simply because I forgot the blotting-book."
Clenching her teeth she quietly left the room, descended the wide Georgian stairs into the hall, and opened the door of the drawing-room.
She peered cautiously into the room, now lit up by cl.u.s.ters of electric lights.
Satisfied that no one was there, she closed the door very quietly, and with silent, cat-like steps walked up to the writing-table.
Again, as her hand fell upon the blotting-book, she looked round in an agony of apprehension. Then, opening it hurriedly, she searched among the leaves with a puzzled brow.
Some of the leaves were heavily blotted and no writing upon them was wholly distinguishable, while others only bore a few well-defined imprints.
Her slender, trembling fingers turned over the leaves in an agony of anxiety, but--either she was too agitated or too inexperienced--she was unable to find what she sought.
Suddenly a thought came to her.
The mirror!--yes, that was the thing. By the aid of the mirror she would be able to identify the sheet she wanted at once. She hurried up to the fireplace.
Above it was an oval mirror framed in wood which had been painted white, and, shaking exceedingly, hardly knowing what she did, she held up the heavy blotter with the paper facing the mirror, and slowly turned over the thick white sheets.
While she was doing this, with a perfectly livid face, she heard the faint sound of an advancing footstep.
It was at the very moment when she thought she had discovered what she wanted, and with twitching fingers was about to tear it out from the book.
The sound of the step came from behind the curtains which hung over the windows leading to the terrace.
Lady Attwill almost bounded back to the writing-table and put down the blotter upon it.
She had hardly done so, and was actually closing the book, when the curtains parted with a soft swish and Collingwood came into the room.
He came in jauntily and easily enough, but there was something in his face which made Alice Attwill give a little startled gasp of alarm and despair.