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Updated: May 25, 2025
Then she remembered Vanderlyn's words about his wife: "There are some of our old times I don't suppose I shall ever forget " and a phrase of Grace Fulmer's that she had but half grasped at the time: "You haven't been married long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in the balance of one's memories."
Nothing, I trust, has prevented his bringing back the portrait you left with him. Let me again entreat you to use your influence with him in procuring me a good copy. I received some days since, through the kindness of Mr. John B. Prevost, a miniature, which appears to have been taken from Vanderlyn's portrait. The execution is good, but in expression it is by no means equal to the portrait.
But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed Vanderlyn's attention. "A windfall?" he gaily repeated. "Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of you," said Strefford imperturbably.
"Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: 'No clothes, she means: 'Not the right clothes." He took a meditative puff. "Ah, you've been going over Ellie's finery with her." "Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she's got nothing for St. Moritz!" "Of course," he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting but a languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn's wardrobe.
Pargeter laid one hand on Vanderlyn's arm with the other he took out of one of his pockets a sheaf of thin slips of paper. The American knew them to contain accounts of accidents and untoward occurrences registered at the Prefecture of Police. Pargeter detached one of the slips and laid it across the sheet of paper on which Madame d'Elphis had written her laconic message:
Vanderlyn's thin nervous hand shot up to his mouth to hide a smile; the eerie feeling which had so curiously possessed him dropped away, leaving him slightly ashamed. "Poor woman," he said to himself, "she cannot even divine that I am an honest man!" He bent his head gravely, and took the roll of notes with which he had come provided out of his pocket. He placed a thousand-franc note on the table.
Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point. But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It was plain that Vanderlyn's protest had been merely formal: like most of the wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented to the poor.
Thanks!" she flared out. "I suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn't immediately occur to you. At least there was a decent interval of doubt...." She stood up, laughing again, and began to wander about the room. In the mirror above the mantel she caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs. Vanderlyn's disconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.
As Vanderlyn's late visitor drove home that night, he said to himself, indeed he said aloud to the walls of the shabby little carriage which had heard so many important secrets, "He knows whatever there is to be known but, then, what is it that is to be known? Of what mystery am I now seeking the solution?" As he heard the door shut on the Prefect of Police, Vanderlyn felt his nerve give way.
Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there, beside the very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn's fatal letter, she opened Nick's. "Don't think me hard on you, dear; but I've got to work this thing out by myself. The sooner the better-don't you agree? So I'm taking the express to Milan presently. You'll get a proper letter in a day or two.
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