"They're upstairs in their rooms now, dressing."
"I hope they don't hurry," Lanyard confessed. "I can spare them a little longer, need time to get my bearings."
"Poor dear!" Folly closed an impulsive hand over Lanyard's. "It _is_ horrid of me to plague you, isn't it? But you know how I love fun . . ." She drew away and made herself prim and meek in her corner. "It's your turn now, I'm perfectly well aware I've got questions by the broadside coming. You may fire when ready."
"But I think you know too well what seems most strange to me . . ."
"All right. I don't mind telling . . . Yes: this is my place. No: I don't own it, I just rent it furnished. From Peter Pagan. He's been such a dear, let me have it for next to nothing for the Summer, and the most perfect staff of servants thrown in."
Lanyard meant it. Since it was manifest that Morphew and Pagan were determined to pluck this poor foolish pigeon, and she was madly bent on being plucked, certainly it had been their book to surround her with a squad of servitors trained to their purpose.
"But that isn't what's most perplexing to you . . ."
"You're perfectly eaten alive by curiosity to know how Morphy got round me, aren't you? Well! but how did he get round _you_?"
Lanyard weakly parried: "Hasn't he told you?"
"Not in so many words. But of course I understand. How could anybody hold out against such magnanimity?"
"You weren't to blame for being so cruelly wrong about him . . . about Mallison and Morphy's having had anything to do with my emeralds, I mean. Everything looked so black for him . . . Even Morphy didn't blame you; only, of course, he was half wild at the time, when you didn't give him a chance to defend himself and prove that Mallison had abused his confidence just as he had mine, only more so. But of course he's told you all about that."
"I am none the less interested to learn what he told you."
"Just what I've said, what you know. He waited weeks before he tried to see me again, and spent simple sloughs of money on detectives, trying to find Mallison and bring him back to prove what an ingrate he'd been. Oh! but I wasn't the only one of Morphy's friends that had suffered through taking Mallison on his endorsement."