Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/44

 Doris stopped just outside the drawing-room door and searched his face keenly, while she whispered:

“And the threats—of exposure. Oh, I heard that. I couldn’t help it—Cyril—”

He glanced down at her quickly.

“Hush, Doris.”

Something she saw in his expression changed her resolution to question him. The mystery which she had felt to hang about him since he had said he was a coward had deepened. Something told her that she had been treading on forbidden ground and that in obeying him she served his interests best, so she led the way into the drawing-room, where they made their adieux.

Byfield had already gone and Sandys and Lady Joyliffe were just getting into their wraps.

“You’ll meet me here at ten?” their hostess was asking of Constance Joyliffe.

“If I’m not demolished by a Zeppelin in the meanwhile,” laughed the widow.

“Or the Yellow Dove,” said Jacqueline Morley. “I’m sure he alights on the roofs of the Parliament Houses.”

“You’ll be safe in Scotland at any rate, Constance. We’re quite too unimportant up there to be visited by engines of destruction—” she laughed meaningly. “That is—always excepting Jack Sandys.”

Sandys looked self-conscious, but Lady Joyliffe merely beamed benignly.

“It will really be quite restful, I’m sure,” she said easily. “Is Cyril going to be at Ben-a-Chielt?”

Hammersley awoke from a fit of abstraction.

“Quite possible,” he murmured, “gettin’ to be a bit of a hermit lately. Like it though—rather.”