"Because I don't," Sylvia replied, coldly.
"Well, there's a brazen-faced bitch!" Miss Moffat gasped.
Sylvia said good-by hurriedly to Mr. Mathers and left him to Maud. When she was in the train on the way to Rustchuk, it suddenly struck her that Zozo might be able to explain the missing passport.
The more Sylvia pondered the coincidence of Queenie's flight with the loss of Maud's passport the more positive she became that Zozo had committed the theft. And with what object? It seemed unlikely that the passport could be altered plausibly enough to be accepted as Queenie's own property in these days when so much attention was being given to passports and their reputed owners. Probably he had only used it as a bait with which to lure her in the first instance; he would have known that she could not read and might have counted upon the lion and the unicorn to impress her with his ability to do something for her that Sylvia had failed to do. Queenie must have been in a state of discouragement through her not having come back to Avereshti on the Sunday evening, as she had promised. The telegram she sent had really been a mistake, because Queenie would never have asked any one in the hotel to read it for her, and Zozo would assuredly have pretended whatever suited his purpose if by chance it had been shown to him.
At first Sylvia had been regretting that she had not divined sooner the explanation of Maud's missing passport, so that she could have warned Mr. Mathers; but now she was glad, because whatever Queenie did, the blame must be shared by herself and the British regulations. She reproached herself for the attitude she had taken toward Queenie's disappearance; she had done nothing in these days at Bucharest to help the poor child, not even so much as to find out where she had gone. If Zozo were indeed a German agent, what might not be the result of that callousness? Yet, after all, he might not be anything of the kind; he might merely have been roused by her own opposition to regain possession of Queenie. Really it was difficult to say which explanation was more galling to her own conscience. However, it was useless to do anything now; there was as little probability of Queenie's being still in Bucharest as of her being anywhere else. If Zozo were in German pay he would find it easy enough to secure Queenie's entrance into a neutral country; and if he were once more enamoured of his power over her, he would certainly have taken precautions against any new intervention by herself.