And to-day, for the first time, he had heard her husband address her coldly and curtly, with a touch of anger even.
He was not likely to forget that curt, impatient tone, and the frown that had accentuated it.
"I was very glad to get your letter," she said presently. "Tell me once more with your own lips that you have ceased to suspect my cousin."
"Ceased to suspect would, perhaps, be too strong an expression. But in the discoveries I have made relating to that murdered girl there is certainly nothing that in any way points to Mr. Grahame."
"I wish you would tell me all you have discovered--how near you are to clearing up the mystery."
"I fear I am still very far from that. It is the history of a remote crime which occupies me at the present, and I hope in that history of the past to find the clue to poor Léonie's death. I shall know more in a few days."
"You saw my advertisement in the _Times_. If that advertisement be not answered within a week, I shall conclude that the man who was to have met Léonie Lemarque on the morning of July 5th has some part in the guilt of her death."
"And then it will be my business or Mr. Distin's business to find that man."
They were at the door of the hotel by this time, and here Heathcote bade Dora adieu.
"We shall meet again before you leave Paris, I daresay," he said. "If Wyllard wants me he will know where to find me."
"No; I am likely to stay here some little time."
"And poor Hilda is longing to have you back at The Spaniards. She will not see Bothwell while you are away. She is bound by the promise you exacted from her. Their future home--everything is in abeyance till you return," pleaded Dora.
"The home must remain in abeyance a little longer. It is hard, no doubt; but when I go back I may be able to give Bothwell some substantial help in the matter of that future home."
"He will need only your sympathy and your advice. He can manage everything else for himself."
"I understand. He has been helped already."
"Bothwell has always been to me as a brother and he can never be poor while I am rich," answered Dora, as they shook hands.
Heathcote walked slowly back to the Boulevard, thinking over this unexpected arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard in Paris. Why had they come? That alleged reason of the picture-sale seemed rather more like an excuse for a journey than a motive. True that Wyllard had been known to go up to London on purpose to attend a sale at Christie & Manson's, and there might, therefore, be nothing extraordinary in his going still further on the same errand. But it was strange that the picture-sale should coincide with Heathcote's presence in Paris. Could it be Dora's eagerness to know the result of his researches that had brought her and her husband to the Hotel Windsor? Was her impatience the motive of the visit?