Two days subsequent to these occurrences--and some hours after his
coupe loaded with his guns and traps had rumbled away to meet Holcomb,
in time for the Adirondack express--Thayor laid a note in his butler's
hands with special instructions not to place it among his lady's mail
until she awoke.
He could not have chosen a better messenger. While originally hailing
from Ireland, and while retaining some of the characteristics of his
race--his good humor being one of them--Blakeman yet possessed that
smoothness and deference so often found in an English servant. In his
earlier life he had served Lord Bromley in the Indian jungle during
the famine; had been second man at the country seat of the Duke of
Valmoncourt at the time of the baccarat scandal, and later on had
risen to the position of chief butler in the establishment of an
unpopular Roumanian general.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that he was at forty-five past
master in domestic diplomacy, knowing to a detail the private history
of more than a score of families, having studied them at his ease
behind their chairs, or that he knew infinitely more of the world at
large than did his master.
Blakeman had two absorbing passions--one was his love of shooting and
the other his reverent adoration of Margaret, whom he had seen develop
into womanhood, and who was his Madonna and good angel.
At high noon, then, when the silver bell on Alice's night table
broke the stillness of her bedroom, her French maid, Annette, entered
noiselessly and slid back the soft curtains screening the bay window.
She, like Blakeman, had seen much. She was, too, more self-contained
in many things than the woman she served, although she had been bred
in Montmartre and born in the Rue Lepic.
"Did madame ring?" Annette asked, bending over her mistress.
Alice roused herself lazily.
"Yes--my coffee and letters."
The girl crossed the room, opened a mirrored door, deftly extracted
from a hanging mass of frou-frous behind it a silk dressing jacket,
helped thrust the firm white arms within its dainty sleeves, tucked a
small lace pillow between Alice's shoulders and picking up the glossy
mass of black hair, lifted it skilfully until it lay in glistening
folds over the lace pillow. She then went into the boudoir and
returned with a dainty tray bearing a set of old Sevres, two buttered
wafers of toast and two notes.
Alice waited until her maid closed the bedroom door, then, with
the impatience of a child, she opened one of the two notes--the one
Annette had discreetly placed beneath the other. This she read and
re-read; it was brief, and written in a masculine hand. The woman was
thoroughly awake now--her eyes shining, her lips parted in a satisfied
smile. "You dear old friend," she murmured as she lay back upon the
lace pillow. Dr. Sperry was coming at five.
She tucked the letter beneath the coverlid and opened her husband's
note. Suddenly her lips grew tense; she raised herself erect and
stared at its contents:
I shall pass the summer in the woods if I can find suitable
place for you and Margaret. Make no arrangements which will
conflict with this. Will write later.