The front door was unlocked, and we walked into the church in silence. Around the pillars holly and ivy were twined. Great armfuls of the shrubs had been flung here and there along the walls in heaps, and a step-ladder stood in one of the aisles, showing that the decoration of the edifice was not yet complete. A subdued melancholy had settled down on my erstwhile vivacious companion, the inevitable reaction so characteristic of the artistic temperament, augmented doubtless by the solemnity of the place, around whose walls in brass and marble were sculptured memorials of her ancient race.
'You promised,' I said at last, 'to tell me how you came to suspect--'
'Not here, not here,' she whispered; then rising from the pew in which she had seated herself, she said:--
'Let us go, I am in no mood for working this morning. I shall finish the decoration in the afternoon.'
We came out into the cool and brilliant sunlight again, and as we turned homeward, her spirits immediately began to rise.
'I am anxious to know,' I persisted, 'why you came to suspect a man whom at first you believed innocent.'
'I am not sure but I believe him innocent now, although I am forced to the conclusion that he knows where the treasure is.'
'What forces you to that conclusion, my lady?'
'A letter I received from himself, in which he makes a proposal so extraordinary that I am almost disinclined to accede to it, even though it leads to the discovery of my necklace. However, I am determined to leave no means untried if I receive the support of my friend, Monsieur Valmont.'
'My lady,' said I, with a bow, 'it is but yours to command, mine to obey. What were the contents of that letter?'
'Read it,' she replied, taking the folded sheet from her pocket, and handing it to me.
She had been quite right in characterising the note as an extraordinary epistle. The Honourable John Haddon had the temerity to propose that she should go through a form of marriage with him in the old church we had just left. If she did that, he said, it would console him for the mad love he felt for her. The ceremony would have no binding force upon her whatever, and she might bring whom she pleased to perform it. If she knew no one that she could trust, he would invite an old college chum, and bring him to the church next morning at half-past seven o'clock. Even if an ordained clergyman performed the ceremony, it would not be legal unless it took place between the hours of eight in the morning, and three in the afternoon. If she consented to this, the emeralds were hers once more.