"You must both come again very soon," their hostess concluded, as
she shook hands. "I enjoyed our bridge immensely."
The two men were already on their way to the door when a sudden
idea seemed to occur to Captain Griffiths. He turned back.
"By-the-by, Lady Cranston," he asked, "have you heard anything from
your brother?"
Philippa shook her head sadly. Helen, who, unlike her friend, had
not had the advantage of a distinguished career upon the amateur
dramatic stage, turned away and held a handkerchief to her eyes.
"Not a word," was Philippa's sorrowful reply.
Captain Griffiths offered a clumsy expression of his sympathy.
"Bad luck!" he said. "I'm so sorry, Lady Cranston. Good night once
more."
This time their departure was uninterrupted. Helen removed her
handkerchief from her eyes, and Philippa made a little grimace at
the closed door.
"Do you believe," Helen asked seriously, "that Captain Griffiths
has any suspicions?"
Philippa shrugged her shoulders.
"If he has, who cares?" she replied, a little defiantly. "The
very idea of a duel of wits between those two men is laughable."
"Perhaps so," Helen agreed, with a shade of doubt in her tone.
CHAPTER X
Philippa and Helen started, a few mornings later, for one of their
customary walks. The crystalline October sunshine, in which every
distant tree and, seaward, each slowly travelling steamer, seemed
to gain a new clearness of outline, lay upon the deep-ploughed
fields, the yellowing bracken, and the red-gold of the bending trees,
while the west wind, which had strewn the sea with white-flecked
waves, brought down the leaves to form a carpet for their feet, and
played strange music along the wood-crested slope.
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