"Yes, that is one of the difficulties," said Virginia. "Only somehow we must get over it."
"I hope, my dear free-lance detective, that you aren"t plotting to accuse the Countess to her face, and have a dramatic scene in the hall of the Ghezireh Palace?"
"I don"t know yet what to do," the girl answered slowly. "But I don"t want to leave Cairo until after we"ve done something."
"Believe me, there"s nothing to do. We are on a wild-goose chase as it is; don"t let"s complicate things by a suit for slander just as it"s begun. My advice is, dear, put this mad idea out of your head, and let"s get on about our business as quickly as we can--as quickly as you yourself wanted to do a few hours ago."
"Then I"m sorry I can"t take your advice," said Virginia. "I"m growing superst.i.tious. I believe that I was brought here for a particular purpose, and I don"t mean to go until, in some way, I"ve accomplished that purpose."
Roger sighed, and said no more. He had exhausted his stock of arguments; he knew Virginia almost as well as he loved her. He had promised cooperation; and though there had been no bargaining, she had voluntarily led him to hope for a reward which, to him, was beyond any other happiness the world might hold. Therefore he could do nothing but bow to the inevitable, and await developments, which meant, with a girl like Virginia Beverly, expecting the unexpected.
Suddenly in the night Virginia sat up in bed and exclaimed aloud: "Oh, if I could!" Kate Gardiner, in a room adjoining, heard her, and supposed that she was talking in her sleep. But the truth was that a plan had at that instant sprung fully armed from her brain, like Minerva from the head of Jove; a plan so daring that the bare thought was an electric shock.
She could not sleep after its conception, but lay tossing and tingling until it was time to get up. Every moment would be long now until the machinery could be set in motion, and she bathed and dressed hastily, having long ago ceased actively to miss Celestine"s lost ministrations.
There was no sound in the next room. Kate was not yet awake, evidently; and so, as she took quite two hours for dressing and beautifying, it would be foolish to wait for her. Virginia went downstairs, looking about in vain for Roger or George, and stepped out on to the wide verandah, for a look at the Nile by morning light. To her joy the beautiful Portuguese countess was there, breakfasting alone, with a yellow-covered French novel open on the little table before her. Virginia instantly decided that she would also breakfast on the verandah, and as near to the Countess as possible.
As the American girl"s pale blue serge rustled its silk lining along the floor, the Portuguese woman raised her eyes from the novel she was reading as she sipped her coffee. The eyes had appeared almost black in the evening; now Virginia saw that they were a curious, greenish gray, and her heart gave a leap, for the eyes of Liane Devereux, in the painted ivory miniature, had been gray.
Now or never, Virginia said to herself, was the time to begin the campaign. She seized the tide of fortune at its flood, and spoke in English, making the most of the pretty, drawling Southern accent of the State after which she had been named, because American girls were privileged to be eccentric.
"Good morning," she said. "Oh, I do hope you understand my language, because I want to tell you something."
The green-gray eyes of the Countess shone keenly between their heavy black fringes during a silent moment of inspection, which must have shown her Virginia divinely young, and childishly innocent of guile. At the end of the moment she smiled.
"Yes, I understand English, and speak it a little," she responded, with a charming accent, and in a voice musical but unexpectedly deep. "You are American, is it not? What have you to tell me--that we have met before, somewhere?"
At this--or Virginia imagined it--there came again a steely flash from the black lashes. "Oh, no," said the girl hurriedly. "I never saw you until yesterday. What I want to tell you is, that I hope you will forgive me for staring at you as I did then. I was afraid you"d think me rude.
But I just couldn"t help it, you are so beautiful. I adore beauty. You can be sure now I"m American, can"t you? for n.o.body but an American girl would say such things to a perfect stranger. I"m glad I _am_ American, for if I didn"t speak I don"t see exactly how I should get to know you.
And I want to know you very much. I made my cousin, Sir Roger Broom--he"s English, though I"m American--ask who you were, so I heard your name.
Mine is Virginia Beverly. Now we"re introduced, aren"t we?"
The Countess laughed and looked pleased. "I have seen your name in the journals," she said--"the journals of society all over the world, that one reads in hotels when one has nothing better to do, is it not? They told the truth in one thing, for they said that you were _tres belle_.
And you have bought the yacht of a Spanish gentleman, whom I have known a little. Yes, I remember it was a Miss Virginia Beverly, for it is not a name to forget; and I love yachting."
By this time, Virginia had ordered her breakfast and received it, but she was far too excited to make more than a pretense at eating. It was almost as if the Countess de Mattos were playing into her hands. It seemed too good to be true. She was afraid that something would happen to ruin all; that she would lose her head, and by her precipitancy put the other on her guard; yet the opportunity was too admirable to be entirely neglected.
"If you like yachting, it would be nice if you could come and have a day"s run with us," said the girl. "The _Bella Cuba_ is at Alexandria, and we should all love taking you. My cousin and my half-brother, George Trent, couldn"t talk of anything but you last night. Perhaps, later, we might arrange it, if the railway journey both ways wouldn"t bore you."
"On the contrary, I should be charmed," replied the Countess. She flushed, and her eyes brightened. Virginia looked at her admiringly, yet sharply, and said to herself: "If that rich, dark complexion of yours is make-up--as it must be to prove my theory right--then it"s the cleverest make-up that any woman ever had as a disguise."
At this moment Sir Roger Broom and George Trent came out on to the verandah together, both looking very much surprised to see Virginia in conversation with the Countess de Mattos.
"Can she have said anything?" Roger thought quickly. But the calm expression of the beautiful, dark face was in itself an answer to his silent question.
The two men strolled up to Virginia, who asked and received permission from the Countess to introduce her brother and cousin; and soon they were talking as if they had known each other for days instead of moments.
The Portuguese beauty was distinctly ingratiating in her manner to all three, so much so that Roger became thoughtful. He was more certain than ever, if that were possible, that this woman was not Liane Devereux, for the voice was many tones deeper, and the Countess spoke English with an accent that was not at all French.
It seemed to him that no woman could disguise herself so completely--face, voice, mannerisms, accent--no matter how clever she might be; besides, Virginia"s idea was ridiculous. But he began to wonder whether the lovely Portuguese had a right to her t.i.tle, or, if she had, whether it were as well gilded as her charming frocks and her residence at this expensive hotel would suggest at first sight.
It seemed to him that she caught too readily at new acquaintances for a rich and haughty daughter of Portuguese aristocracy, and though he believed that he understood, only too well, Virginia"s motive for cultivating a friendship, he was inclined to fear that the girl might be victimized by an adventuress.
The Countess de Mattos was too handsome and too striking not to have been remarked in Cairo, no matter how quietly she might live at the Ghezireh Palace Hotel, and he determined to make inquiries of some officers whom he knew there.
At all events, plans for the present were changed. Instead of a day or two in Cairo they were to stay on indefinitely. George, as well as Roger, was taken into the secret, but Lady Gardiner was told only the fact. She was pleased at first, for she was fond of Cairo, and had never had a chance to stop there in luxury before. She did not, however, like the Countess de Mattos, who was much too handsome to be acceptable to her; and before the slower and more prudent Roger had learnt anything, she was primed with all the gossip of the hotel regarding the Portuguese beauty.
There was a certain Mrs. Maitland-Fox at the Ghezireh Palace, whom Lady Gardiner had met before, and from her she gathered the crumbs of gossip with which she immediately afterward regaled Virginia.
"They" said that the Countess de Mattos, although she might really be a countess (and there were those who pretended to vouch for this), had scarcely a penny. She traded on her beauty and the lovely clothes with which some trusting milliner must have supplied her, to pick up rich or influential friends, from whom she was certain to extort money in some way or another. And it was Mrs. Maitland-Fox"s advice that Miss Beverly should be warned to beware of the beautiful lady.
Among his friends, Roger heard something of the same sort, and though he was bound to admit that it was all very vague, he begged Virginia to abandon a forlorn hope, and let the Portuguese woman alone.
"If she were really a Portuguese woman she might vanish from before my eyes, for all I should care," obstinately returned the girl. "But she is Liane Devereux, and if she breathed poison I wouldn"t let her go till I had torn out her secret."
"How do you mean to set about doing that?" demanded Roger.
"That is _my_ secret," said Virginia. "Only let me alone and don"t thwart me, or you"ll spoil everything."
Roger waited, expectant and apprehensive. He had not to wait long.
CHAPTER VI
THE END OF THE WORLD
They stayed a week in Cairo, and at the end of that time the Countess de Mattos had accepted an invitation to go yachting; not for a day, but for a vague period of "dawdling," as Virginia evasively expressed it. The beautiful Portuguese woman had hesitated at first, and confided to the American girl that, on account of the delay in receiving an expected sum of money, she did not quite see how she could get away in time. But Virginia had begged the Countess not to let such a small difficulty trouble her for a moment. She really must accept a loan to tide over the little annoyance; it would indeed be too hard to lose the pleasure of her companionship for the sake of a few paltry dollars, so that would be no favour at all, or rather, the favour would be the other way round.
The "few paltry dollars" necessary turned out to be three thousand; but if they had been three times three thousand Virginia would have lent them just as cheerfully without the prospect of, or even wish for, their return. With the money obtained from Virginia"s practically unlimited letter of credit in her pocket, and a hint delicately expressed that more would be at her service whenever she wished, "as it was such a nuisance having to keep in touch with one"s bankers and people like that on a long yachting trip when nothing was less settled than one"s plans," the Countess thought herself very well off.
"Are you in a hurry to be anywhere in particular during the next few weeks?" asked the girl of her new friend. "No? How nice! Then let us throw all the responsibility of planning things upon the men. What fun never to know where we are going, but to be surprised always when we arrive anywhere."
And the Countess de Mattos agreed. She would have agreed with almost anything that Virginia said that day. If the American girl believed that Providence had directed her to cross the path of this beautiful woman, the beautiful woman was equally sure that the G.o.d of luck had put this infatuated young heiress in her way.
Roger would hardly have consented to the carrying out of Virginia"s plan, which he called "kidnapping," had George Trent not joined his arguments to his sister"s.
"It does seem a mad idea," he admitted, "but if the woman isn"t Liane Devereux, no harm will be done, except that she"ll be taken a longer journey than she expects. If she is--ah! I know what you think, old chap, without your lifting your eyebrows up to your hair; but, by Jove!
Virgie"s got an instinct that"s like the needle of a compa.s.s. When she says "north," I"d bet my bottom dollar it _was_ north, that"s all. If I don"t object to Virgie"s a.s.sociating with the Countess, you needn"t--yet, anyhow. She isn"t the kind of girl to be hurt by that sort of thing, and, besides, she"ll have the d.i.c.kens of a tantrum if we try to thwart her now she"s set her heart on this trick. She"d be equal to slipping anchor with the Countess on board and leaving us in the lurch. Let"s see the little girl through on her own lines, and if the snap doesn"t come off, she can"t blame _us_. Anyway, it"s rougher on me than on you, for Virgie"s put me up to do the agreeable to the Countess and keep her from getting restless before we attempt to spring our mine. A while ago I wouldn"t have asked anything better than flirting all day with such a woman, who is as pretty and as fascinating as they"re made, but I"m not in the mood for it now, somehow. Still, we"re playing for big stakes--you for yours, Roger, I for mine."
This was the only reference he made to his interest in Madeleine Dalahaide; but Roger guessed what was in his mind.
Lady Gardiner floundered deeper than ever into the quicksands of mystery when she heard that the Countess de Mattos was to be one of the party for the rest of the voyage--wherever it was to take them. What could be Virginia"s object in picking up this woman? Was it really true that she had taken the violent and sudden fancy to her that she feigned to feel, or did that pretense cloak a hidden motive? Kate had no clue, unless the fact that Virginia had asked her never to mention Madeleine Dalahaide or the Chateau de la Roche before the Countess could be called a motive. She would have disobeyed Virginia, by way of a curiosity-satisfying experiment, if she had not feared that the result might be disastrous and that she would be found out.
At least she would in a gentle, tactful way have suggested objections to the Countess de Mattos"s presence on the yacht, had she not been certain that Virginia would have frankly advised her to stay behind if she did not like the arrangements for the rest of the trip. Much as she loved Cairo in the height of its gay season, much as she hated the sea at all seasons, nevertheless she was doggedly determined to see this adventure to the end (bitter though it might be), not only to earn her thousand pounds, but to know the secret which actually kept her waking and wondering at night.