“I come to you from Mr. Dundas, on business which he told me was
    of the greatest and most pressing importance.

    “DIANA FORREST.”

That was the whole contents of the note; but a dozen sheets closely filled with arguments could not have moved me more.

CHAPTER XVIII

MAXINE MEETS DIANA

Godensky was obliged to take his leave, which he did abruptly, but to all appearance with a good grace; and when he was gone Marianne ushered in a girl—­a tall, beautiful girl in a grey tailor dress built by an artist.

For such time as it might have taken us to count twelve, we looked at each other; and as we looked, a little clock on the mantel softly chimed the quarter hour.  In fifteen minutes I should be due upon the stage.

The girl was very lovely.  Yes, lovely was the right word for her—­lovely and lovable.  She was like a fresh rose, with the morning dew of youth on its petals—­a rose that had budded and was beginning to bloom in a fair garden, far out of reach of ugly weeds.  I envied her, for I felt how different her sweet, girl’s life had been from my stormy if sometimes brilliant career.

“Mr. Dundas sent you to me?” I asked.  “When did you see him?  Surely not—­since—­”

“This afternoon,” she answered quietly, in a pretty, un-English sounding voice, with a soft little drawl of the South in it.  “I went to see him.  They gave us five minutes.  A warder was there; but speaking quickly in Spanish, just a few words, he—­Mr. Dundas—­managed to tell me a thing he wished me to do.  He said it meant more than his life, so I did it; for we have been friends, and just now he’s helpless.  The warder was angry, and stopped our conversation at once, though the five minutes weren’t ended.  But I understood.  Mr. Dundas said there wasn’t a moment to lose.”

“Yet that was in the afternoon, and you only come to me at this hour!” I exclaimed.

“I had something else to do first,” she said, in the same quiet voice.  She was looking down now, not at me, and her eyelashes were so long that they made a shadow on her cheeks.  But the blood streamed over her face.

“Even before I saw—­Mr. Dundas,” she went on, “I had the idea of calling on you—­about a different matter.  I think it would be more honest of me, if before I go on I tell you that—­quite by accident, so far as I was concerned—­I was with someone who saw Mr. Dundas go to your house last night, a little after twelve.  I didn’t dream of spying on—­either of you.  It just happened, it wouldn’t interest you to know how.  Yet—­I beg of you to tell me one thing.  Was he with you for long—­so long that he couldn’t have got to the other place in time to commit the murder?”

“He was in my house until after one,” I said boldly.  “But you, if you are his friend, ought to know him well enough to be certain without such an assurance from me, that he is no murderer.”