Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/199

 man might assume vast importance in her own life. If she had heard Gaylor's name at the inquest in connection with Poppet, she had forgotten it, and all her fears as well as her hopes were for the moment transferred to France. With Miss Ricardo she stopped in Paris for one night only, and then went on to Chamounix. The quaint little place, with its vast white background of Mont Blanc, was beautiful to them both—to Terry, who had lived for years in India; to Nora, who had never been out of England—and they stayed there two or three days longer than they had intended. But this change of plan was not wholly on account of their delight in Chamounix. Terry had the idea of driving by pleasant stages to St. Pierre de Chartreuse; and, having received an answer to a letter posted in Paris, Nora Verney asked a great favour of Miss Ricardo. It was largely because of the granting of this favour that the two were delayed in Chamounix; and meantime Gaylor was exceedingly busy at Riding St. Mary. He arrived there the day after his return from Harrogate, and made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was a detective, engaged upon the business which filled the minds of every one in the neighbourhood. But he did try, with his agreeable manner and pleasant looks, to hypnotize people into the belief that detectives were not the repulsively cunning creatures pictured in penny fiction.