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There was no doubt about it when they had reviewed the rows of little painted faces. The Fragonard was gone. "Stolen!" gasped Lady Annesley-Seton. "Unless one of you, or some servant you trust with the key, is a somnambulist," said Knight. "I don't see how it would pay a thief to steal such a thing. It must be too well known.
His desire that she should scrape acquaintance with Lord and Lady Annesley-Seton seemed boyish and amusing to her, but she did not see how it could be brought about. Next morning at eleven o'clock, when Annesley had been up for two hours, packing her new things in her new trunks and the gorgeous new dressing-bag, she was informed that Mr. Nelson Smith had arrived.
Annesley was charming to him, not only in the wish to please Knight but because she was kind-hearted and had intense sympathy for suppressed people. Mr. Savage was grateful and admiring, and drank in every word Knight dropped, as if carelessly, about the relationship to Lord Annesley-Seton.
"Lady Annesley-Seton and I kept up a correspondence for months after you sent me away so cruelly, in such a hurry, believing hateful things, though you had no proof. She wrote that 'Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith' would probably never come back to England to settle, as she'd heard from a Mrs. Waldo that they'd gone to live in Texas. She asked if I knew whether 'Nelson Smith' had lost his money.
"You might make a start in that direction when they come to dinner to-morrow evening." Lord Annesley-Seton had outgrown such enthusiasms as he might once have had, therefore his account of the cousins encouraged Constance to hope much, and she was not disappointed. On the contrary, she thought that he had not said enough, especially about the man.
Then I can phone to Madalena early in the morning, yes or no, and put her out of her suspense. No such luck, though, as that he will have got back from his club!" He had got back, however. The entrance hall was in twilight when Dick Annesley-Seton let them into the house with his latchkey, for all the electric lights save one were turned off.
I may be doing something against them. If you or Lord Annesley-Seton speak of me to the police I will go away, and you will never hear more of my visions as you call them in future. Unless you promise that you will let the police find the thieves in their own way, without dragging me in, I shall be so unnerved that my eyes will be darkened."
She had had chances to realize his force of character in little ways as well as big ones; and she understood that he was bent on scraping acquaintance with Lord and Lady Annesley-Seton. Had he not decided upon Sidmouth the instant she mentioned their ownership of a place in the neighbourhood? She had been certain that he would not neglect the opportunity created.
Besides, her experience as an "amateur clairvoyante" made her quick to resent anything which had the air of patronage. One must go delicately to work to think out a scheme, if Lady Annesley-Seton were really in "dead earnest" about wanting her to come.
So saying, Lady Annesley-Seton plumped down on a sofa beside her hostess, as the next person hurried off to plunge into the mysteries. "I feel quite weak in the knees," Constance whispered to Annesley. "Has she told you anything?" "No," said the girl "I don't want to know things." She might have added: "Things told by her." But she did not say this. Constance shivered.
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