Frobisher sat the following morning in the orchid-house chuckling to himself and waiting the advent of his two guests to luncheon. Heaven alone could follow the twists and turns of that cunning brain. Frobisher was working out one of his most brilliant schemes now. He took infinite pains to obtain by underground passages the things he might have obtained openly and easily. But there was the delight of puzzling other people.
He looked up presently, conscious of a presence beyond his own. In the dark Frobisher could always tell if anybody came into the room. He crooked his wicked head sideways with the air of a connoisseur, and in sooth there was good cause for his admiration. Here was something equal at least to his most beautiful and cherished orchids, a tall, graceful girl with shining brown hair, and eyes of the deepest, purest blue. Her complexion was like old ivory, and as pure, the nose a little short, perhaps, but the sweet mouth was full of strength and character.
"I came for the flowers that you promised me, Sir Clement," she said.
"Call me uncle and you shall have the conservatory," Frobisher grinned. "I am your uncle by marriage, you know, and your guardian by law. Angela, you are looking lovely. With the exception of a peasant woman I once met in Marenna, you are the most beautiful creature I ever saw."
Angela Lyne listened with absolute indifference. She was accustomed to be studied like this by Sir Clement Frobisher, whom she loathed and detested from the bottom of her heart. But Lady Frobisher was her aunt, and Frobisher her guardian for the next year, until she came of age, in fact.
"Give me the flowers," she said. "I am late as it is. I have sent my things on, for I shall dine with Lady Marchgrave after the concert, and come home alone. Hafid will let me in."
"Better take a latchkey," Frobisher suggested. "There! Let me pin them in for you. I'll show you an orchid when you have time to examine it that will move even you to admiration. But not now; she is too superb a creature for passing admiration. Now I think you will do."
There was no question of Frobisher's taste or his feeling for arranging flowers. The blossoms looked superb and yet so natural as they lay on Angela's breast—white orchids shot with sulphur. They were the theme of admiration an hour later at Lady Marchgrave's charity concert; they gleamed again on Angela's corsage as she sat in the Grosvenor Square drawing-room at dinner. Five-and-twenty people sat round the long table with its shaded lights and feathery flowers. There were distinguished guests present, for Lady Marchgrave was by way of being intellectual, but Angela had eyes for one man only. He had come a little late, and had slipped quietly into a chair at the bottom of the table—a tall man with a strong face, not exactly handsome, but full of power. The clean-shaven lips were very firm, but when the newcomer smiled his face looked singularly young and sweet. Angela's dinner partner followed her glance with his eyes.
"If it isn't that beast Denvers," he muttered. "I thought he had been murdered in the wilds of Armenia or some such desirable spot. You ought to be glad, Angela."
"I am glad, Mr. Arnott," Angela said coldly. "Permit me to remind you again that I particularly dislike being called by my Christian name; at least, at present."
The little man with the hooked nose and the shifting, moist eye, put down his champagne glass savagely. For some deep, mysterious reason, Sir Clement favoured George Arnott's designs upon Angela, and if nothing interfered he was pretty sure to get his own way in the end. At present Angela was coldly disdainful; she little dreamt of the power and cunning of the man she was thwarting. She turned her head away, absently waiting for Lady Marchgrave's signal. There was a flutter and rustle of silken and lace draperies presently, and the chatter of high-bred voices floating from the hall. A good many people had already assembled in the suite of rooms beyond, for Lady Marchgrave's receptions were popular as well as fashionable. Angela wandered on until she came to the balcony overlooking the square. She leant over thoughtfully—her mind had gone back to such a night a year or so before.
"Mine is a crescent star to-night," a quiet voice behind her said. "I seemed to divine by instinct where you were. Angela, dear Angela, it is good to be with you again."
The girl's face flushed, her blue eyes were full of tenderness. Most people called her cold, but nobody could bring that accusation against her now. Her two hands went out to Harold Denvers, and he held them both. For a long while the brown eyes looked into the heavenly blue ones.
"Still the same?" Denvers asked. "Nobody has taken what should be my place, Angela?"
"Nobody has taken it, and nobody is ever likely to," Angela smiled. "There is supposed to be nothing between us; you refused to bind me, and you did not write or give me your address, but my heart is yours and you know it. And if you changed I should never believe in anything again."
"If I should change! Dear heart, is it likely? If you only knew what I felt when I caught sight of you to-night. My queen, my beautiful, white queen! If I could only claim you before all the world!"
Angela bent her head back behind the screen of a fluttering, silken curtain and kissed the speaker. He held her in his arms just for one blissful moment.
"It seems just the same," he said, "as if the clock had been put back a year, to that night when Sir Clement found us out. The son of the man whom he had ruined and his rich and lovely ward! There was a dramatic scene for you! But he only grinned in that diabolical way of his, and shortly after that mission to Armenia was offered to me. I never guessed then who procured it for me, but I know now as well as I know that Sir Clement never intended me to come back."
"Harold! Do you really mean to say that—that——"
"You hesitate, of course. It is not a pretty thing to say. Life is cheap out there, and if I was killed, what matter? Let us talk of other and more pleasant things."
"Of your travels and adventures, for instance. Did you find any wonderful flowers, like you did, for instance, in Borneo, Harold? Where did you get that lovely orchid from?"
A single blossom flamed on the silk lapel of Denvers' coat—a whitish bloom with a cloud of little flowers hovering over it like moths. It was the Cardinal Moth again.
"Unique, is it not?" Harold said. "Thereby hangs a strange, romantic tale which would take too long to tell at present. What would Sir Clement give for it?"
"Let me have it before I go," asked Angela, eagerly. "I should like to show it to Sir Clement. He has some wonderful flower that he wants me to see, but I feel pretty sure that he has nothing like that. I shall decline to say where I got the bloom from."
Denvers removed the exquisite bloom with its nodding scarlet moths and dexterously attached it to Angela's own orchids. The thing might have been growing there.
"It seems strange to see that bloom on your innocent breast," Harold said. "It makes me feel quite creepy when I look at it. If you only knew the sin and misery and shame and crime that surrounds the Cardinal Moth you would hesitate to wear it."
Angela smiled; she did not possess the imaginative vein.
"You shall tell me that another time," she said. "Meanwhile you seem to have dropped from the clouds.... Are your plans more promising for the future?"
"A little nebulous for the present," Denvers admitted, "though the next expedition, which is not connected with Sir Clement Frobisher, promises well for the future. There is a lot to be done, however, and I am likely to be in London for the next three weeks or so. And you?"
"We are here for the season, of course. My aunt is staying at Chaffers Court till Friday, hence the fact that I am here
