Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance she had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when she would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell her everything; that the name of young Davenant's successor should be confided to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been obscurely aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force her confidences on Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of grat.i.tude, allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty "surprise" of the sapphire bangle slipped onto her friend's wrist in the act of their farewell embrace.

The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer's eye for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist; yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had already trans.m.u.ted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.

The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not see his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched wrist.

"Look, dearest--wasn't it too darling of Ellie?"

She pressed the b.u.t.ton of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her husband's face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off the bracelet and held it up to him.

"Oh, I can go you one better," he said with a laugh; and pulling a morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.

Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was afraid to look again at Nick.

"Ellie--gave you this?" she asked at length.

"Yes. She gave me this." There was a pause. "Would you mind telling me," Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, "exactly for what services we've both been so handsomely paid?"

"The pearl is beautiful," Susy murmured, to gain time, while her head spun round with unimaginable terrors.

"So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services would appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind enough to tell me just what they were?"

Susy threw her head back and looked at him. "What on earth are you talking about, Nick! Why shouldn't Ellie have given us these things? Do you forget that it's like our giving her a pen-wiper or a b.u.t.ton-hook?

What is it you are trying to suggest?"

It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put the questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that was evident-one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one's cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered at the frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead.

There had been more than one moment in her past when everything-somebody else's everything-had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.

"What is it?" she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain silent.

"That's what I'm here to ask," he returned, keeping his eyes as steady as she kept hers. "There's no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie shouldn't give us presents--as expensive presents as she likes; and the pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were they given? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks the intercourse of truly civilized people, you'll probably agree that there are limits; at least up to now there have been limits...."

"I really don't know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa."

"But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn't she?" he suggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room.

"A whole summer of it if we choose."

Susy smiled. "Apparently she didn't think that enough."

"What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child."

"Well, don't you set store upon Clarissa?"

"Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn't mention her in offering me this recompense."

Susy lifted her head again. "Whom did she mention?"

"Vanderlyn," said Lansing.

"Vanderlyn? Nelson?"

"Yes--and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, my dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because I should like to know," Nick broke out savagely, "if we've been adequately paid."

Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study her next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could at last only retort: "What is it that Ellie said to you?"

Lansing laughed again. "That's just what you'd like to find out--isn't it?--in order to know the line to take in making your explanation."

The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susy herself had not expected.

"Oh, don't--don't let us speak to each other like that!" she cried; and sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.

It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love for each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything--she wanted to tell him everything--if only she could be sure of reaching a responsive chord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and benumbed her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any account as long as they continued to love each other!

His touch fell compa.s.sionately on her shoulder. "Poor child--don't," he said.

Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through her tears. "Don't you see," he continued, "that we've got to have this thing out?"

She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. "I can't--while you stand up like that," she stammered, childishly.

She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing did not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a caller on the farther side of a stately tea-tray. "Will that do?" he asked with a stiff smile, as if to humour her.

"Nothing will do--as long as you're not you!"

"Not me?"

She shook her head wearily. "What's the use? You accept things theoretically--and then when they happen...."

"What things? What has happened!"

A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all--? "But you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in old times," she said.

"Ellie and young Davenant?"

"Young Davenant; or the others...."

"Or the others. But what business was it of ours?"

"Ah, that's just what I think!" she cried, springing up with an explosion of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering light in his face.

"We're outside of all that; we've nothing to do with it, have we?" he pursued.

"Nothing whatever."

"Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie's grat.i.tude? Grat.i.tude for what we've done about some letters--and about Vanderlyn?"

"Oh, not you," Susy cried, involuntarily.

"Not I? Then you?" He came close and took her by the wrist. "Answer me.

Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie's?"