"You _will_," she insisted, and gave her protest a value that I felt to be
slightly compromising. I could only infer that the loss of my good opinion
would be fatal to her future happiness.
"Indeed, I shan't," I protested, although I had to say it in a tone that
practically confirmed this talk of ours as a perfectly genuine flirtation.
"Men have such queer ideas of honour in these things," she went on with a
recovering confidence.
"Do you mean that you--peeped," I said. "Into Brenda's room?"
She made a _moue_ that I ought to have found fascinating, nodding
emphatically.
"The door wasn't locked, then?" I put in.
She shook her head and blushed again; and I guessed in a flash that she
had used the keyhole.
"But could you be sure?" I persisted. "Absolutely sure that she wasn't
there?"
"I--I only opened the door for a second," she said, "But I saw the bed. It
hadn't been slept in."
"And this happened?" I suggested.
"Just before I came down to prayers," she replied.
"Well, where is she?" I asked.
Miss Tattersall laughed. Now that we had left the dangerous topic of her
means of obtaining evidence, she was sure of herself again.
"She might be anywhere by this time," she said. "She and her lover
obviously went off in the motor together at twelve o'clock. They are
probably in London, by now."
I did not give her confidence for confidence. I had practically promised
Banks not to say that I had seen him on Jervaise Clump at five o'clock
that morning, and I was not the least tempted to reveal that important
fact to Miss Tattersall. I diverted the angle of our talk a trifle, at the
same time allowing my companion to assume that I agreed with her
conclusion.
"Do you know," I said, "that the person I'm most sorry for in this affair
is Mr. Jervaise. He seems absolutely broken by it."
Miss Tattersall nodded sympathetically. "Yes, isn't it dreadful?" she
said. "At breakfast this morning I was thinking how perfectly detestable
it was of Brenda to do a thing like that."
"Or of Banks?" I added.
"Oh! it wasn't his fault," Miss Tattersall said spitefully. "He was just
infatuated, poor fool. She could do anything she liked with him."
I reflected that Olive Jervaise and Nora Bailey would probably have
expressed a precisely similar opinion.
"I suppose he's a weak sort of chap?" I said.
"No. It isn't that," Miss Tattersall replied. "He doesn't look weak--not
at all. No! he is just infatuated--for the time being."
We had been pacing up and down the lawn, parallel to the front of the
house and perhaps fifty yards away from it--a safe distance for
maintaining the privacy of our conversation. And as we came to the turn of
our walk nearest to the drive, I looked back towards the avenue that
intervened between us and the swelling contours of Jervaise Clump. I was
thinking about my expedition towards the sunrise; and I was taken
completely off my guard when I saw a tweed-clad figure emerge from under
the elms and make its way with a steady determination up the drive.
"Well, one of them isn't in London, anyway," I said.
"Why? Who?" she returned, staring, and I realised that she was too
short-sighted to make out the identity of the advancing figure from that
distance.
"Who is it?" she repeated with a hint of testiness.
I had seen by then that I had inadvertently given myself away, and I had
not the wit to escape from the dilemma.
"I don't know," I said, hopelessly embarrassed. "It--it just struck me
that this might be Banks."
He had come nearer to us now, near enough for Miss Tattersall to recognise
him; and her amazement was certainly greater than mine.
"But you're right," she said with a little catch in her breath. "It is
Banks, out of uniform."
For a moment I hoped that her surprise might cover my slip, but she was
much too acute to pass such a palpable blunder as that.
"It is," she repeated; "but how did you know? I thought you had never seen
him."
"Just an intuition," I prevaricated and tried, I knew at the time how
uselessly, to boast a pride in my powers of insight.
The effect upon my companion was neither that I hoped to produce, nor that
I more confidently expected. Instead of chaffing me, pressing me for an
explanation of the double game I had presumably been playing, she looked
at me with doubt and an obvious loss of confidence. Just so, I thought,
she might have looked at me if I had tried to take some unfair advantage
of her.
"Well, I suppose it's time to get ready for church," she remarked coldly.
"Are you coming?"
I forget what I replied. She was already slipping into the background of
my interest. I was so extraordinarily intrigued by the sight of Arthur
Banks, the chauffeur, boldly ringing at the front door of Jervaise Hall.