Matilda ‘placed’ her voice carefully, as a singer would do, before she answered.

“He is not ill,” she said.  “He was here an hour ago.  I did not ask him why he did not come to luncheon, because it did not concern me.”

“Well?  And the rest?”

“The rest?  How anxious you are!” she exclaimed scornfully.  “The rest is as well as ill can be.  I think he will marry Veronica.”

“I should suppose so, if she will marry him,” observed Macomer.  “It would be as sensible to doubt that a starving man would take bread, as to question whether a poor man will accept a fortune, especially in such an agreeable shape.  It is quite another matter, whether the fortune will give itself to the poor man.  What does Veronica say?  Is she pleased with the idea?”

“Moderately.  She has not refused.  She wishes to think about it.”

“I hope that she will not think too long.  To-day is the tenth of December.  There are just three weeks.  By the bye, Matilde, I hope you have put the will in a safe place.  Where is it?”

Matilde paused two seconds before she answered.  Though she could not imagine in what way Gregorio could improve his desperate position by getting the will out of her hands, nor by tampering with it, of which she knew him to be quite capable, yet, on general principles, she distrusted him so wholly and profoundly that she determined to deceive him as to the place in which she kept it.  Being clever at concealing things, she began by showing it to him.  She rose, took a key from behind a photograph on the mantelpiece, and unlocked the drawer of her writing-table.  The will lay there, folded in a big envelope.

“Here it is,” she said.  “Do you wish to look over it again?”

She drew it half out of the cover and held it up before him.  He recognized the document and seemed satisfied.

“Oh! no,” he answered.  “I know it by heart.  I only wished to know where it was.”

“Very well; it is here,” said Matilde, putting it back and locking the drawer again.  “I generally carry the key about with me,” she added carelessly, “but I have no pocket in this gown, so I laid it behind that photograph.  It is not a very good place for it, is it?”

She hesitated, holding the key in her hand, and looking about the room while he watched her.  The woman’s enormous power of deception showed itself in the spontaneous facility with which she went through a complicated little scene, quite improvised, in order to mislead her husband.  She knew that he himself would suggest some place for the key to lie in.

“Put it under the edge of the carpet in the corner near the door,” he suggested.  “You can easily turn the carpet up a little between the rings.”

“That is a good idea,” she said.  “It is as well that you should know where it is, in case anything were to happen to me.”

She was already in the corner, and she thrust the key under the doubled edge of the crimson carpet.