Instantly the girl's manner changed. She glanced at the Rembrandt with a
shrewd smile that meant something beyond a mere act of prudence well
done. Then she went down to the library and began an eager search for a
certain book. She found it at length, the "David Copperfield" in the
"Charles Dickens" edition of the great novelist's works. For the next
hour or so she was flitting over the pages with the cipher telegram
spread out before her. A little later and the few jumbled, meaningless
words were coded out into a lengthy message. Christabel read them over a
few times, then with the aid of a vesta she reduced the whole thing,
telegram and all, to tinder, which she carefully crushed and flung out of
the window.
She looked away down the terrace, she glanced at the dappled deer
knee-deep in the bracken, she caught a glimpse of the smiling sea, and
her face saddened for a moment.
"How lovely it all is," she murmured. "How exquisitely beautiful and how
utterly sad! And to think that if I possessed the magician's wand for a
moment I could make everything smile again. He is a good man--a better
man than anybody takes him to be.
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