Part 165

"Indeed, I am!"

"Will M'sieu' permit me to go now?"

"Certainly. Do they feed and lodge you properly at the inn?"

Asticot murmured that it was heavenly, and hastily took his departure, burning with anxiety concerning the safety of the treasure he had concealed under the straw and blanket in the harness room.

As for Warner, he was intensely interested, excited, and perplexed. Here, apparently, in this old, stained pillowcase which Asticot had found in the private safe of Wildresse, were the first clews to Philippa's identity that anybody, excepting Wildresse, had ever heard of.

These photographs were without doubt photographs of Philippa as a child, two taken in Tours, one in Sofia.

And the girl's name was Philippa, too----

Suddenly it occurred to him that, according to Wildresse, Philippa had been left at his door as a Paris foundling--as an infant only a few weeks old. So Wildresse himself might have named her. Perhaps his wife had written Philippa's name on these pictures. And yet--how had Philippa come to be in the Bulgarian city of Sofia? Was it possible that Wildresse could ever have taken the child there?

He looked down at the toys, at the clothing. Had they belonged to Philippa as a child?

Between his room and Gray's there was a pretty sitting room. He put everything back into the pillowcase, went out into the corridor, found the sitting room door open and the room full of sunlight.

A maid, who sat sewing in the corridor, went to Philippa's room with a request from Warner that she dress and come to the sitting room.

Warner emptied the pillowcase on the center table, then, folding it, gave it to the maid, who returned to say that Philippa was dressed and would come immediately.

"Take this pillowcase to Madame la Comtesse," he explained. "Say to Madame that there is a device embroidered on the case, and that I should be infinitely obliged if Madame la Comtesse would be kind enough to search for a similar device among such volumes on the subject as she possesses."

The maid went away with the pillowcase, and a moment later Philippa appeared, fresh, dainty, smiling, an enchanting incarnation of youth and loveliness in her thin, white morning frock.

She offered her hand and withdrew it immediately, as though this slight, new shyness of hers in his presence forbade that contact with him which, before that day when he painted her, had never seemed to embarrass her.

He ushered her silently into the little sitting room; she went forward and stopped by the center table, looking down curiously at the motley heap of toys and clothing which covered it.

He watched her intently as she turned over one object after another. Presently she glanced around at him interrogatively.

"Examine them," he said.

"What are they?"

"You see--a child's toys and clothing. Pick up that broken doll and look it over carefully."

She lifted the battered French doll, examined it as though perplexed, laid it aside, picked up a Polichinelle, laid that aside, looked at a woolly dog, a cloth cat, a wooden soldier in French uniform with scarlet cap askew and one arm missing.

"Well?" he asked.

"I don't understand, Jim."

"I know. Is there among these things any object which seems at all familiar to you?"

"No."

"Nothing that seems to stir in you any memory?"

She shook her head smilingly, turned over the heap of garments, shifting them to one side or the other, caught a glimpse of the little cloak of pale blue silk and swansdown, lifted it curiously.

"How odd," she said; "I have----" She hesitated, looked intently at the faded silk, passed one slim hand over the swansdown, stood with brows bent slightly inward as though searching in her mind, deeply, for something which eluded her.