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Updated: May 24, 2025
"No," said Vanderlyn, dully, "she has not done that." He took her to her door, and then, as he had promised Tom Pargeter to do, went to the Avenue du Bois, there to spend with Margaret Pargeter's husband another term of weary waiting and suspense.
"Then, Messieurs, I will send any news I get straight to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne." As they walked through the long corridors, it became clear that whatever anxiety Pargeter had suffered had dropped off him, for the moment, like a cloak. "I shouldn't be surprised if I can get off to-night after all," he said cheerfully, "you heard what he said?
But Vanderlyn belonged to the type of man who finds it far easier to fight for others, and especially for his country, than for himself. Still, in this case, was he not fighting for Margaret Pargeter? For what he knew she valued far more than life itself her honour.
There, the sudden vanishing, the obliteration as it were, of a human being especially of a foreigner arouses comparatively little surprise or interest among those whose weary duty it is to try and find what has become of the lost one. To Madame de Léra, even to Tom Pargeter, the beginning of what was to be so singular and perplexing a quest had about it something awe-inspiring and absorbing.
At last they turned into the Bois de Boulogne, rushing through the leafy roads at a high speed; a few moments more would see them in the beautiful avenue where stood, isolated from its neighbours, the Villa Pargeter, instinct with flamboyant luxury and that perfection only achieved by the lavish use of money.
Pargeter here, but his soul revolted from the lie. "Yes, I have come to see Madame de Léra," he said in a low voice. "Kindly give her my card, and ask her if she will be good enough to receive me?"
Nay, Vanderlyn at no moment ever forgot Peggy's child. To himself, he seemed to be the only human being who ever thought of the poor little boy lying ill in far-away England. "Well, you need not be afraid," he said quickly, "that Pargeter will go away to-day.
The police have been worrying him, and and at their suggestion we have been seeking among her things among her correspondence for some clue. But of course we found nothing. Pargeter is longing to go away to England. How I wish he would go, God! how I wish he would go! After all, as he says himself, he can do no good by staying here. He would receive any news within an hour."
He was still riding the whirlwind of his own poignant emotion; he was telling himself, with voiceless and yet most binding oaths, that never, never should the woman whose heart had just beaten against his heart, whose lips had just trembled beneath his lips, go back to act the part of even the nominal wife to Tom Pargeter.
His own chief, the American Ambassador, would be informed of what had happened, but he was a wise old man, there was no fear of indiscretion in that quarter; but yes, he, Vanderlyn, must face that fact Tom Pargeter would know the truth. Vanderlyn's hidden abhorrence of the other man, of the man whose friend he had perforce compelled himself to be for so long, rose in a great flood. Tom Pargeter?
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