He laughed in a forced, unnatural way.

“You are quite well aware that you could never look otherwise than maddeningly beautiful,” he said harshly.  “Do you want me to recall the fact to you again that you are shortly to be Monte Irvin’s wife—­or should you prefer me to remind you that you have declined to be mine?”

Turning slowly, he walked away, but: 

“Oh, Lucy!” whispered Rita.

He paused, looking back.

“I know now why you didn’t want me to come,” she said.  “I—­I’m sorry.”

The hard look left Sir Lucien’s face immediately and was replaced by a curious, indefinable expression, an expression which rarely appeared there.

“You only know half the reason,” he replied softly.

At that moment Mrs. Sin came in, followed by Mareno carrying two dressing-cases.  Mollie Gretna had run off to Kilfane, and could be heard talking loudly in another room; but, called by Mrs. Sin, she now returned, wide-eyed with excitement.

Mrs. Sin cast a lightning glance at Sir Lucien, and then addressed Rita.

“Which of these three rooms you choose?” she asked, revealing her teeth in one of those rapid smiles which were mirthless as the eternal smile of Sin Sin Wa.

“Oh,” said Rita hurriedly, “I don’t know.  Which do you want, Mollie?”

“I love this end one!” cried Mollie.  “It has cushions which simply reek of oriental voluptuousness and cruelty.  It reminds me of a delicious book I have been reading called Musk, Hashish, and Blood.”

“Hashish!” said Mrs. Sin, and laughed harshly.  “One night you shall eat the hashish, and then—­”

She snapped her fingers, glancing from Rita to Pyne.

“Oh, really?  Is that a promise?” asked Mollie eagerly.

“No, no!” answered Mrs. Sin.  “It is a threat!”

Something in the tone of her voice as she uttered the last four words in mock dramatic fashion caused Mollie and Rita to stare at one another questioningly.  That suddenly altered tone had awakened an elusive memory, but neither of them could succeed in identifying it.

Mareno, a lean, swarthy fellow, his foreign cast of countenance accentuated by close-cut side-whiskers, deposited Miss Gretna’s case in the cubicle which she had selected and, Rita pointing to that adjoining it, he disposed the second case beside the divan and departed silently.  As the sound of a closing door reached them: 

“You notice how quiet it is?” asked Mrs. Sin.

“Yes,” replied Rita.  “It is extraordinarily quiet.”

“This an empty house—­’To let,’” explained Mrs. Sin.  “We watch it stay so.  Sin the landlord, see?  Windows all boarded up and everything padded.  No sound outside, no sound inside.  Sin call it the ’House of a Hundred Raptures,’ after the one he have in Buenos Ayres.”

The voice of Cyrus Kilfane came, querulous, from a neighboring room.

“Lola, my dear, I am almost ready.”