Page:Vance--The false faces.djvu/98

80 governments; but never, it was true, a woman of the caste of Cecelia Brooke; unless, indeed, this were an actress of surpassing talent, gifted to hoodwink the most skeptical and least susceptible of men.

And yet. …

Lanyard's train of thought faltered. New doubt of the girl began to shadow his meditations. Contradictory circumstances he had noted intruded, uninvited, to challenge overcredulous conclusions concerning her.

Would any secret agent worth her salt invite suspicion by making such a conspicuously furtive embarkation, by such ostentatious avoidance of her fellow passengers, by surrounding herself with an atmosphere of such palpable mystery? Would such an one confess she had a "secret" to an utter stranger, as she had to Lanyard that first night out? Would she, under any conceivable circumstances, entrust to that same stranger that selfsame secret upon whose inviolate preservation so much depended?

And would she make love-trysts on the decks by night?

Would a brother-agent take her in his arms, then reprove her with every symptom of vexation for her "madness," her "insanity," her "nonsense" that was like to "drive me mad"?—Thackeray's own words!

Vainly Lanyard cudgelled his wits for some plausible reading of this riddle.

Was this Brooke girl possibly (of a sudden he sat bolt upright) a Prussian agent infatuated with this young Englishman and by him beloved in spite of all that forbade their passion?

Did not this explanation reconcile every apparent