She had nerves to such an extent that when she went to unlock the drawer of her own private toilet-table, in which her prudent and fussy husband forced her to lock up her rings and brooches every night, she attacked the wrong drawer—­an empty unfastened drawer that she never used.  And lo! the empty drawer was not empty.  There was a sovereign lying in it!

This gave her a start, connecting the discovery, as naturally at the first blush she did, with the mandarin.

Surely it couldn’t be, after all.

Then she came to her senses.  What absurdity!  A coincidence, of course, nothing else?  Besides, a mere sovereign!  It wasn’t enough.  Charlie had said ‘rich for life’.  The sovereign must have lain there for months and months, forgotten.

However, it was none the less a sovereign.  She picked it up, thanked Providence, ordered the dog-cart, and drove straight to Brunt’s.  The particular thing that she acquired was an exceedingly thin, slim, and fetching silver belt—­a marvel for the money, and the ideal waist decoration for her wonderful white muslin gown.  She bought it, and left the shop.

And as she came out of the shop, she saw a street urchin holding out the poster of the early edition of the Signal.  And she read on the poster, in large letters:  ‘Death of Li hung Chang.’  It is no exaggeration to say that she nearly fainted.  Only by the exercise of that hard self-control, of which women alone are capable, did she refrain from tumbling against the blue-clad breast of Adams, the Cheswardine coachman.

She purchased the Signal with well-feigned calm, opened it and read:  ’Stop-press news.  Pekin.  Li Hung Chang, the celebrated Chinese statesman, died at two o’clock this morning.—­Reuter.’

III

Vera reclined on the sofa that afternoon, and the sofa was drawn round in front of the drawing-room fire.  And she wore her fluffiest and languidest peignoir.  And there was a perfume of eau de Cologne in the apartment.  Vera was having a headache; she was having it in her grand, her official manner.  Stephen had had to lunch alone.  He had been told that in all probability his suffering wife would not be well enough to go to the ball.  Whereupon he had grunted.  As a fact, Vera’s headache was extremely real, and she was very upset indeed.

The death of Li Hung Chang was heavy on her soul.  Occultism was justified of itself.  The affair lay beyond coincidence.  She had always known that there was something in occultism, supernaturalism, so-called superstitions, what not.  But she had never expected to prove the faith that was in her by such a homicidal act on her own part.  It was detestable of Charlie to have mentioned the thing at all.  He had no right to play with fire.  And as for her husband, words could give but the merest rough outline of her resentment against Stephen.