Eric looked at the cut, carefully. "Not bad, but you might have bled
to death, had it been a quarter of an inch to the left. If you like,
I'll fix it up a bit for you after breakfast."
Eric's voice was calm enough, but his pulse was pounding, his heart
sick. All morning he rode through the countryside adjoining the
Dickerson estate, but he let the mare go as she liked and where she
liked, for his mind was busy with the events of the hour before dawn.
He knew that the slash on his brother's wrist was made by steel, not
glass. Yet when the ride was over, he could not bring himself to tell
John of Suzanne's visit.
"She must have been sleep-walking, though I can't account for the way
she was decked out. I've always thought Suzanne extremely modest in
her dress, certainly not inclined to load herself with jewelry. And
those boots! John must get them today and destroy them, as he said.
Silly, perhaps, but----" His thoughts went on and on, always returning
to the Medici boots, in spite of himself.
* * * * *
Eric came back from his ride at eleven o'clock, with as troubled a
mind as when he began it. He almost feared to see Suzanne at lunch.
When he did meet her with John and Mr. Erskine on the cool, shaded
porch where they lunched, he saw there was nothing to fear. The
amorous, clinging woman of the hour before dawn was not there at all.
There was only the Suzanne whom Eric knew and loved as a sister.
Here, again, was their merry little Suzanne, somewhat spoiled by her
husband, it is true, but a Suzanne sweetly feminine, almost childish
in a crisp, white frock and little, low-heeled sandals. Their talk was
lazily pleasant--of tennis honors and horses, of the prize delphiniums
in the garden, of the tiny maltese kitten which Suzanne had brought up
from the stables late that morning and installed in a pink-bowed
basket on the porch. She showed the kitten to Eric, handling its tiny
paws gently, hushing its plaintive mews with ridiculous pet names.
"Perhaps I'm a bigger fool than I know. Perhaps it never happened,
except in a dream," Eric told himself, unhappily. "And yet----"
He looked at the red marks on his hand, marks made by a furious
Suzanne in that hour before the dawn. Too, he remembered the cut on
John's wrist, the cut so near the vein.
Eric declined John's invitation to go through the museum with him that
afternoon, but he said with a queer sense of diffidence, "While
you're there, John, you'd better get rid of the Medici boots. Creepy
things to have around, I think."
"They'll be destroyed, all right. But Suzanne is just bound to try
them on. I'll get them, though, and do as Uncle said."
Eric remained on the terrace, speculating somewhat on just what John
and Suzanne would do, now that the huge fortune of Silas Dickerson was
theirs. Eric was not envious of his brother's good luck, and he was
thankful for his share in old Silas' generosity.
At five o'clock he entered the hall, just as Suzanne hurried in from
the kitchen. She spread our her hands, laughingly.
"With my own fair hands I've made individual almond tortonis for
dessert. Cook thinks I'm a wonder! Each masterpiece in a fluted silver
dish, silver candies sprinkled on the pink whipped cream! O-oh!"
She made big eyes in mock gluttony. Eric forgot, for a moment, that
there ever had been another Suzanne.
"You're nothing but a little girl, Suzie. You with your rhapsodies
over pink whipped cream! But it's sweet of you to go to such trouble
on a warm afternoon. See you and the whatever-you-call-'ems at
dinner!"
"They're tortonis, Eric, tortonis."
Suzanne ran lightly up the stairs. Eric followed more slowly. He
entered his room thinking that there were some things which must be
explained in this house with the old museum.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes before dinner Eric and John were on the terrace waiting
for Suzanne. John was talkative, which was just as well, as he might
have wondered at his brother's silence. Eric was torn between a desire
to tell his brother his reluctant suspicions concerning the Medici
boots and Suzanne and his inclination to leave things alone till the
boots could be destroyed.