"Well, I call this absolutely ripping," said Miss Penny exuberantly,
as they sat by the fire of many-coloured flames, after a slender cup
of tea and as hearty a meal as Graeme would allow them in view of
possible contingencies. "Do please smoke, Mr. Graeme. It just needs a
whiff of tobacco to complete our enjoyment."
"Sark," she added, leaning back with her hands clasped behind her
head, "when no one knows you're there, is just heavenly. No letters,
no telegrams, no intrusion of the commonplace outside world! Those are
distinctly heavenly attributes, you know--"
It was truly extraordinary how, with nothing more than a very general
intention thereto, she played into his hands at times. Here now was a
very simple question he had been wanting to put to Miss Brandt for
days past. For the answer to it might shed light in several
directions. But he had been loth to force matters, and had quietly
waited such opportunity as might arise in a natural way without undue
obtrusion of the doubt that was in his mind.
"'Peace--perfect peace!' as Adam Black used to sigh," he said. "And
by the way"--turning to Margaret--"speaking of letters, I have often
wondered at times if you ever received two that I sent you concerning
Lady Elspeth--just about the time she was called away to Scotland?"
She looked back at him with surprise, and his question was answered
and his doubt solved before ever she opened her lips.
"About Lady Elspeth? No,--I certainly never got them."
"H'm!" he nodded thoughtfully. "The first I feared might have gone
astray through some stupidity of the post-office. But the second I
dropped into your letter-box myself. Moreover--"
"I never got them,"--with a charming touch of colour.
"Moreover----?" said Miss Penny expectantly, with a dancing light in
her eyes.
"Well," he said, after a pause, "to tell you the whole story, Mr.
Pixley assured me that you had had them and had handed them on to
him."
"Mr. Pixley said that?" and Margaret sat up, with very much more than
a touch of colour in her face now. In fact it was militantly red and
vastly indignant.
"Yes. I--well, I called upon him at his office just to find out
if--well, if you were ill or anything like that, you know. And among
other interesting information he told me that, and cut off my head
with his glasses and threw my remains out into the street;" at which
Margaret smiled through her indignation.
"Mr. Pixley," said Miss Penny emphatically, "is a--a Johnnie Vautrin
on a larger scale. Had he any other interesting items of information
for you, Mr. Graeme?"
"Well--yes, he had. But I can estimate them now at their proper value,
and it can rest there."
"It was Mr. Black's enthusiasm for Sark at that Whitefriars' dinner
that put it into my head when--when we were wondering where to go. I
remember now," said Margaret.
"It was Black's enthusiasm for Sark that put it into _my_ head when
_I_ was wondering where to go," said Graeme.
"There you are, you see," said Miss Penny. "I knew you must have had
some common inspiration."
"I am greatly indebted to Black. He's one of the finest fellows I
know. He's done me more than one good turn, but I shall always count
Sark his chiefest achievement," said Graeme heartily.