VI

IN the drawing-room with the blue curtains Mr. Held was saying to Pauline Leicester: “Yes, it’s just gone ten. It’s too late for a telegram, but I’m sure you’ll get a message somehow to say she’s coming. After all, he can telephone from Brighton.”

“He mayn’t have succeeded,” Pauline said. “Oh, I’m sure he’s succeeded,” Mr. Held answered. “I feel it in my bones.”

It was now the thirtieth or fortieth time that since eight o’clock he had uttered some such words, and he was going on to say: “He and she are great friends, aren’t they?” when Saunders opened the door to say that a lady wished to speak to Mrs. Leicester.

“Oh, they are great friends,” Pauline answered Mr. Held. “Miss Lascarides is his cousin”; and then to Saunders: “Who is it?”

Saunders answered that he didn’t know the lady, but that she appeared to be a lady.

“What’s she like?” Pauline said.

The butler answered that she was very tall, very dark, and, if he might say so, rather imperious.

Pauline’s mouth opened a little. “It’s not,” she said—“it’s not Lady Hudson?”

“Oh, it isn’t Lady Hudson, mum. I know Lady Hudson very well by sight. She goes past the house every day with a borzoi.”

In the dining-room, lit by a solitary light on the chimney-piece, Pauline saw a lady—very tall, very dark, and very cool and collected. They looked at each other for the shadow of a moment with the odd and veiled hostility that mysterious woman bestows upon her fellow-mystery.

“You’re Pauline Leicester?” the stranger said. “You don’t know who I am?”

“We’ve never met, I think,” Pauline answered.

“And you’ve never seen a photograph?”

“A photograph?” Pauline said. “No; I don’t think I’ve seen a photograph.”

“Ah, you wouldn’t have a photograph of me that’s not a good many years’ old. It was a good deal before your time.”

With her head full of the possibilities of her husband’s past, for she couldn’t tell that there mightn’t have been another, Pauline said, with her brave distinctness:

“Are you, perhaps, the person who rang up 4,259 Mayfair? If you are ...”

The stranger’s rather regal eyes opened slightly. She was leaning one arm on the chimney-piece and looking over her shoulder, but at that she turned and held out both her hands.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, “it’s perfectly true what he said. You’re the bravest woman in the world, and I’m Katya Lascarides.”

With the light full upon her face, Pauline Leicester hardly stirred.

“You’ve heard all about me,” she said, with a touch of sadness in her voice, “from Robert Grimshaw?”

“No, from Ellida,” Katya answered, “and I’ve seen your photograph. She carries it about with her.”

Pauline Leicester said, “Ah!” very slowly. And then, “Yes; Ellida’s very fond of me. She’s very good to me.”

“My dear,” Katya said, “Ellida’s everything in the matter. At any rate, if I’m going to do you any good, it’s she that’s got me here. I shouldn’t have done it for Robert Grimshaw.”

Pauline turned slightly pale.

“You haven’t quarrelled with Robert?” she said. “I should be so sorry.”

“My dear,” Katya answered, “never mention his name to me again. It’s only for you I’m here, because what Ellida told me has made me like you;” and then she asked to see the patient.

Dudley Leicester, got into evening dress as he was by Saunders and Mr. Held every evening, sat, blond and healthy to all seeming, sunk in the eternal arm-chair, his fingers beating an eternal tattoo, his eyes fixed upon vacancy. His appearance was so exactly natural that it was impossible to believe he was in any “condition” at all. It was so impossible to believe it that when, with a precision that seemed to add many years to her age, Katya Lascarides approached, and, bending over him, touched with the tips of her fingers little and definite points on his temples and brows, touching them and retouching them as if she were fingering a rounded wind-instrument, and that, when she asked: “Doesn’t that make your head feel better?” it seemed merely normal that his right hand should come up from the ceaseless drumming on the arm of the chair to touch her wrist, and that plaintively his voice should say: “Much better; oh, much better!”

And Pauline and Mr. Held said simultaneously: “He isn’t ...”

“Oh, he isn’t cured,” Katya said. “This is only a part of the process. It’s to get him to like me, to make him have confidence in me, so that I can get to know something about him. Now, go away. I can’t give you any verdict till I’ve studied him.”