There was a tapping at the door; a maid came in. She advanced towards the girl with something held out in her hand.

"Excuse me, Miss Forster, but is this yours?"

It was a locket, attached to a slender gold chain. The girl looked round quickly; she made as if to open the box she had just now shut.

Then she said:

"I don't think it can be mine, but it resembles one I have; please let me look at it."

She took the locket and examined it closely. As she did so her face changed, as if something had startled her. She looked at the maid, with in her eyes what might almost have been a look of fear. Then, turning her back, as if to hide the agitation which she could not help but feel, she touched a spring; the locket came open. At the sight of what was within she broke into a sudden exclamation; she swung right round again. There was no doubt that something had startled her now; the blood had come into her cheeks, her eyes were wide open, she trembled.

"Where did you get this?" she cried.

"If you please, miss, I found it on the floor outside your room. I was coming along and I saw it lying there, and it was so close to your door that I thought you might have dropped it."

"When was this? When did you see it there?"

"A moment ago, miss; as soon as I had picked it up, I knocked at your door."

"But it's inconceivable, incredible! It certainly wasn't there just now when Lady Cantyre went out."

"That I can't say, miss; I didn't see her ladyship."

"But if it had been there she would have seen it." The girl moved a step closer. "Who are you?"

The maid seemed as if she did not know what to make of Miss Forster's manner, which was peculiar; so peculiar that it might almost have been described as threatening.

"Me, miss? I'm Simmons."

Miss Forster was silent, not, it would seem, because she had nothing to say, but because she had so much that she didn't know how to say it.

All at once she moved towards the door of the room.

"Come here; now show me, please, exactly where you found this locket, the very spot."

Opening the door, she allowed the maid to precede her into the pa.s.sage.

As if, as was only natural, disconcerted by the young lady's manner, the maid did what was required. She pointed to the floor.

"I can't, of course, miss, say which was the exact spot--n.o.body could; but I should say, as near as possible, it was just there."

"Then Lady Cantyre must have seen it as she went out; if she had she would have brought it to me; she would have done something."

"As to that, miss, I cannot speak."

"You say that your name is Simmons?"

"Yes, miss, Jane Simmons."

"Have you been here long?"

"No, miss; I'm one of the new servants who came in just before Easter when the family returned from town."

"What made you think that the locket had anything to do with me?"

"I didn't, miss. I didn't think anything at all about it; there was the locket and there was your door. I thought that someone who was the other side of the door might have something to do with the locket. I didn't know that you were in your room, miss; I thought that you might have dropped it going out."

"There's something about this that I don't understand; but, for the present, that will do. I may have some questions to put to you later, Jane Simmons. You can go; when I've spoken to Lady Cantyre, you will probably hear from me again."

Violet Forster, back in her room, stared at the locket as if it were some strange, terrible mystery; which to her, in a sense, it was.

"My locket; the one I gave him; the double of the one he gave me."

Unlocking the leather case which stood upon the dressing-table--from what was perhaps intended to be a secret receptacle at the bottom, she took a locket which was attached to a slender gold chain, comparing it with the one the maid had brought.

"It's my locket--there are my initials--my portrait inside; they are a pair--only I'm in one and he's in the other. He told me that mine should never leave him; that if it wasn't about his neck, it would always be somewhere about his person; how came it to be there, where that woman said it was? Is this the something which I felt was going to happen? What does it mean? Is it a message? From whom?--from him? I feel--I feel--Sydney, where are you?"

She swung suddenly round, gazing round the brightly lighted room with startled, staring eyes, as if she did not know for what she was looking. Then she caught sight of something which was lying on the floor almost at her feet.

"What's that?" She picked it up. "Where did that come from? Surely it was not there just now; what--what does it all mean?"

It was an envelope which she had picked up from the carpet; she was holding it gingerly between her finger and thumb as if it were some dangerous thing.

"What's written on it? 'Sydney Beaton's card'--what! There's something inside it." Tearing it open, she took out what it contained. "It's a playing-card, the ace of clubs. What does it mean?"

CHAPTER XIII

The Alcove

The ball was a great success, it was generally admitted. Miss Forster could have danced each number on the programme with half a dozen different partners if she had chosen. She danced with Mr. Noel Draycott; when it came to sitting out, he found her manner a little disconcerting. He was of the fatuous type of young man, a better dancer than conversationalist. He had a sort of cut-and-dried routine on such occasions, saying the same things, as much as possible, to each of his partners in turn. New ideas would not come to him quickly, especially when he was talking to women; if they would not keep to the subject which he felt was appropriate to the occasion, he preferred not to talk at all.

Miss Forster treated him in that respect quite badly. When he tried to make one of his orthodox remarks, which were meant to be compliments, she ignored him utterly. She not only said things which worried him--to him it always was a labour to find an answer to a remark that was unexpected--she asked him questions which puzzled him still more, questions which he felt that she had no right to ask; particularly of a man in the middle of a dance.

When he had quitted her, before seeking his next partner, he unburdened himself to his friend, Anthony Dodwell.

"She's a top-hole dancer, Miss Forster, and as pretty as paint, but when it comes to asking a man if he likes liars I draw the line."

"Did she ask you if you liked liars?"

"She asked me much worse things than that. She was just asking me, when I hooked it, what I thought was the most shameful way in which a man could treat a friend. If I hadn't hooked it, I don't know what she wouldn't have asked me next; she's taken the stiffening out of my collar, talking to a man like that, between a two-step and a waltz."

When his friend had left him, Dodwell advanced to the lady of whom they had been speaking.

"May I have the pleasure of a dance, Miss Forster?"

She had her hand on the arm of the partner who was about to bear her off; looking Captain Dodwell up and down in a fashion which, to say the least, was marked, she said, in a tone of voice which was clearly audible to those around: