Part 98 (2/2)

CHAPTER VI

Miss Van Tuyn was not in the hotel when Lady Sellingworth called. She did not come back till late, and when she entered the hall she was unusually pale, and looked both tired and excited. She had been to d.i.c.k Garstin on an unpleasant errand, and she had failed in achieving what she had attempted to bring about. Garstin had flatly refused not to exhibit Arabian's portrait. And she had been obliged to tell Arabian of his refusal.

The man at the bureau gave her Lady Sellingworth's note, and she took it up with her to her sitting-room. As she sat down to read it she noticed the words on the envelope, ”Strictly private,” and wondered what it contained. She did not recognize the handwriting as Adela's. She took the letter out of the envelope and saw again the warning words.

”What can it be about?”

Before she read further she felt some unpleasant information was in store for her, and for a moment she hesitated. Then she looked at the address on the paper: ”18A Berkeley Square.”

It was from Adela! She frowned. She felt hostile, already on the defensive, though she had, of course, no idea what the letter was about.

But when she had read it her cheeks were scarlet, and she crushed the paper up in her hand.

”How dare she write to me like that! I don't believe it. I don't believe a word of it! She only wants to take him away from me as she is trying to take Alick Craven.”

Instantly she had come to a conclusion about Adela's reason for writing that letter. She remembered the strange episode in the _Bella Napoli_ on the previous evening--Adela's extraordinary departure when Craven had come to speak to her and Arabian. She had not seen Craven again. There had been no explanation of that flight. In this letter, between the lines, she read the explanation. Adela must know Arabian, must have had something to do with him in the past. They had, perhaps, even been lovers. She did not know the age of Arabian, but she guessed that he was about thirty-five, perhaps even thirty-eight. Adela was sixty now. They might have been lovers when Arabian was quite young, perhaps almost a boy. At that time Adela had been a brilliant and conquering beauty, middle-aged certainly, over forty, but still beautiful, still full of charm, still bent on conquest. Miss Van Tuyn remembered the photograph of Adela which she had seen at Mrs. Ackroyde's. Yes, that was it. Adela knew Arabian. They had been lovers. And now, out of jealousy, she had written this abominable letter.

But the girl read it again, and began to wonder. It was strangely explicit, even for a letter of a jealous and spiteful woman. It told her that Arabian was beyond the pale, that he ought to be in prison. In prison! That was going very far in attack. To write that, unless it were true, was to write an atrocious libel. But a jealous woman would do anything, risk anything to ”get her own back.”

Nevertheless Miss Van Tuyn felt afraid. This strange and terrible letter dovetailed with d.i.c.k Garstin's warning, and both fitted in as it were with the underthings in her own mind, with those things which Garstin had summed up in one word ”intuition.”

Arabian had taken her news about Garstin quite coolly.

”I will see about that myself,” he had said. ”But now--”

And then he had made pa.s.sionate love to her. There had been--she had noticed it all through her visit--a new pressure in his manner, a new and, as she now began to think, almost desperate authority in his whole demeanour. His long reticence, the reserve which had puzzled and alarmed her, had given place to a frankness, a heat, which had almost swept her away. She still tingled at the memory of what she had been through. But now she began to think of it with a certain anxiety. In spite of her anger against Adela her brain was beginning to work with some of its normal calmness.

Arabian had been very slow in advances. But now was not he like a man in great haste, like a man who wished to bring something to a conclusion rapidly, if possible immediately? Pa.s.sion for her, perhaps, drove him on now that at last he had spoken, had held her in his arms. But suppose he had another reason for haste? He had seen Lady Sellingworth. He knew that she was a friend of the girl he wanted to marry. Miss Van Tuyn remembered that he had not welcomed her suggestion that the two couples, he and she, Lady Sellingworth and Craven, should have coffee together.

He had spoken of the smallness of the tables in the _Bella Napoli_. But that might have been because he was jealous of Craven.

She read the letter a third time, very slowly and carefully. Then she put it back into its envelope and rang the bell.

A waiter came.

”It's about seven, isn't it?” she said.

”Half past seven, madam.”

”Please bring me up some dinner at once--anything. Bring me a sole and an omelette. That will do. But I want it as soon as possible.”

”Yes, madame.”

The waiter went out. Then Miss Van Tuyn went to see old f.a.n.n.y, and explained that she must dine alone that evening as she was in a hurry.

”I have to go to Berkeley Square directly after dinner to visit a friend, Lady Sellingworth.”

”Then I am to dine by myself, dear?” said Miss Cronin plaintively.

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