She began by saying: 

“I hear you beat Sir Junius Fortescue out shooting to-day, and won a lot of money from him which you gave to the Cottage Hospital.  I don’t like shooting, and I don’t like betting; and it’s strange, because you don’t look like a man who bets.  But I detest Sir Junius Fortescue, and that is a bond of union between us.”

“I never said I detested him.”

“No, but I am sure you do.  Your face changed when I mentioned his name.”

“As it happens, you are right.  But, Miss Holmes, I should like you to understand that you were also right when you said I did not look like a betting man.”  And I told her some of the story of Van Koop and the L250.

“Ah!” she said, when I had finished, “I always felt sure he was a horror.  And my mother wanted me, just because he pretended to be low church—­but that’s a secret.”

Then I congratulated her upon her approaching marriage, saying what a joyful thing it was now and again to see everything going in real, happy, storybook fashion:  beauty, male and female, united by love, high rank, wealth, troops of friends, health of body, a lovely and an ancient home in a settled land where dangers do not come—­at present—­respect and affection of crowds of dependants, the prospect of a high and useful career of a sort whereof the door is shut to most people, everything in short that human beings who are not actually royalty could desire or deserve.  Indeed after my second glass of champagne I grew quite eloquent on these and kindred points, being moved thereto by memories of the misery that is in the world which formed so great a contrast to the lot of this striking and brilliant pair.

She listened to me attentively and answered: 

“Thank you for your kind thoughts and wishes.  But does it not strike you, Mr. Quatermain, that there is something ill-omened in such talk?  I believe that it does; that as you finished speaking it occurred to you that after all the future is as much veiled from all of us as—­as the picture which hangs behind its curtain of rose-coloured silk in Lord Ragnall’s study is from you.”

“How did you know that?” I asked sharply in a low voice.  For by the strangest of coincidences, as I concluded my somewhat old-fashioned little speech of compliments, this very reflection had entered my mind, and with it the memory of the veiled picture which Mr. Savage had pointed out to me on the previous morning.

“I can’t say, Mr. Quatermain, but I did know it.  You were thinking of the picture, were you not?”

“And if I was,” I said, avoiding a direct reply, “what of it?  Though it is hidden from everybody else, he has only to draw the curtain and see—­you.”

“Supposing he should draw the curtain one day and see nothing, Mr. Quatermain?”

“Then the picture would have been stolen, that is all, and he would have to search for it till he found it again, which doubtless sooner or later he would do.”