Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/124

 out. If he had been the coroner, it would have been different. He would have known exactly what to say.

"Was there never anything serious between you and Sir Ian, then Captain Hereward?" the coroner went on, looking relieved.

"Captain Hereward never thought of me at all seriously," Terry returned courageously. "Never. We saw just enough of each other for some people to fancy there was a flirtation, I suppose."

Again a cold glance at Major Smedley. He looked, she thought, like an ugly Burmese idol.

"You never met Sir Ian Hereward again till the day before yesterday ?"

Terry replied that she had not.

"Did you correspond with him in the interval?"

"Oh, no. Miss Latham—Lady Hereward and I wrote to each other occasionally. Not very often." Miss Ricardo did not think it necessary to state that the letters had ceased after Milly Latham's marriage.

"You were always on good terms then, with Lady Hereward?"

"Of course. She had been very kind to me when I was an insignificant little girl, and she was a charming young woman, with hosts of important and interesting friends."

Miss Ricardo was doing her very best for Sir Ian Hereward, though never had that mysterious cry of