Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/110



NSIDE her own room she stood for a moment tremulously in the dark, fingering the guilty thing in her hands as she had fingered the other one—the one she had destroyed. Or hadn’t she destroyed it? For a moment the thought came to her that Cyril had practiced some trick upon her when they had knelt before the fire, substituting other papers for the ones that were to be burned. But that was impossible. The papers had not touched his fingers. He it was who had made a hole for them in the fire, but her fingers had thrust the original papers into the glowing coals. She turned the packet over and over in her fingers, glancing at the closed door that separated her from Cyril. Another message! It must be.

She pulled the curtains at the window and then moving quietly to the bed, lit the candle on the night-stand. Another packet of Riz-la-Croix, new like the other, with its tiny thin rubber band. She opened it quickly and scanned its pages, finding what she sought without difficulty. The writing was not in the same hand. It was rounder and less minute, covering in all seven pages, and it was written carelessly as if the writer had been in a hurry. Cyril’s own handwriting it seemed. The purport of its message was the same.

No. She remembered the dates. These were some-