“Hewlishes has stepped round the corner, too,” admitted Uncle Ben. “Oh yes; there's been changes in the works, there's no doubt. And there's only one sort o' change in the malgamite trade. Come on, Frenchy, time's up.”
The men stood up and bade Cornish good night, each after his own manner, and went away steadily enough. It was only their heads that were intoxicated, and perhaps the brandy of the Café de l'Europe had nothing to do with this.
Cornish followed them, and, in the Keize Straat, he called a cab, telling the man to drive to the house at the corner of Oranje Straat and Park Straat, occupied by Mrs. Vansittart. That lady, the servant said, in reply to his careful inquiry, was at home and alone, and, moreover, did not expect visitors. The man was not at all sure that madame would receive.
“I will try,” said Cornish, writing two words in German on the corner of his visiting-card. “You see,” he continued, noticing a well-trained glance, “that I am not dressed, so if other visitors arrive, I would rather not be discovered in madame's salon, you understand?”
Mrs. Vansittart shook hands with Cornish in silence, her quick eyes noted the change in him which the shrewd butler had noticed in the entrance-hall. The Cornish of a year earlier would have gone back to the hotel to dress.
“I was just going out to the Witte society concert,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “I thought the open air and the wood would be pleasant this evening. Shall we go or shall we remain?” She stood with her hand on the bell looking at him.
She rang the bell and countermanded the carriage. Then she sat slowly down, moving as under a sort of oppression, as if she foresaw what the next few minutes contained, and felt herself on the threshold of one of the surprises that Fate springs upon us at odd times, tearing aside the veils behind which human hearts have slept through many years. For indifference is not the death, but only the sleep of the heart.
“No,” answered Cornish, with a grave smile; “at a little inn in Scheveningen, where no questions are asked.”
Mrs. Vansittart nodded her head slowly. “Then, _mon ami_,” she said, “the time has come for plain speaking?”
“It is always the woman who wants to get to the plain speaking,” she said, with a smile, “and who speaks the plainest when one gets there. You men are afraid of so many words; you think them, but you dare not make use of them. And how are women to know that you are thinking them?” She spoke with a sort of tolerant bitterness, as if all these questions no longer interested her personally. She sat forward, with one hand on the arm of her chair. “Come,” she said, with a little laugh that shook and trembled on the brink of a whole sea of unshed tears, “I will speak the first word. When my husband died, my heart broke--and it was Otto von Holzen who killed him.” Her eyes flashed suddenly, and she threw herself back in the chair. Her hands were trembling.