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rather over-ornate room, which was as full of collector’s pieces as a museum.
    Cathleen wondered whether the Tintorettos and Titians on the walls were genuine, and decided that if they were the di Rinis could still muster a small fortune between them if the need arose and their home had to be sold up, and the silver-gilt furniture in the dining-room was so reminiscent of a stage-set that she was inclined to doubt its authenticity. All the same, it was the first time in her life she had sat between a young woman dripping with diamonds and a young man with emerald studs in his shirt at a table so loaded with silver and glowing Venetian glass that, even if every single piece was not an heirloom, the effect achieved was sufficient to make one think of the Borgias and their standard of entertaining, particularly when one glanced at the handsome brother and sister presiding one at each end of the table.
    After dinner coffee and liqueurs were served in the salon, and Bianca reclined on a satin-covered couch while a white-coated servant did the honours with the coffee-cups. Cathleen refused a liqueur, and after the champagne that had been pressed on her at dinner she thought it wise to do so. She was not accustomed to champagne, and it had seemed to her only common sense to say ‘No’ every time attempts were made to refill her glass.
    Paul, who had often looked along the length of the table at her and smiled and waved his hand, attached himself very purposefully to her after dinner. Edouard had been placed at Bianca’s right hand in the dining room, and after dinner she seemed disinclined to relinquish her right to keep him close to her side if she wished.
    Like a spoiled, pampered, luxurious cream-coloured cat with flaming hair she lay on the exquisite eighteenth-century couch, and Edouard sat on the foot of it and told her entertaining stories and smiled at her with his inscrutable dark eyes. By contrast with the other men present he was aloof, controlled, and an enigma; but not, apparently, to Bianca, whose wide eyes gazed into his so frequently that a looker-on could have received the impression that, without displaying anything in the nature of personal interest, she yet had a message to convey to him, and one that she was determined should not escape him or be capable of misinterpretation before they parted that evening.
    As for Moroc himself, it would have been impossible to have gathered much from his expression, or even his attentiveness. But it was obvious he realised what was expected him, and the hostess kept him chained to her side without, apparently, the smallest difficulty.
    Paul, once dinner was over, attached himself to Cathleen as if he, too, had a purpose. But it had no connection with her journey to Italy. Try as she would she could extract nothing from him that threw any light on her sister’s disappearance, and apparently Bianca was unwilling to enter into any revealing discussion on the subject of Arlette.
    When Cathleen asked Paul whether Signorina di Rini had been able to provide any clue to Arlette’s extraordinary disappearance he merely shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, smiling regretfully.
    “I am sorry, signorina, but Bianca is as ignorant of Arlette’s whereabouts as I am.” He spoke soothingly. “Believe me, we would help you if we could, but there is nothing, I’m afraid, that we can tell you. After all,” trying to ensure her reasonableness, “your sister did not have to tell us where she was going.”
    Cathleen bit her lip.
    “You have no knowledge even whether she left Italy?”
    “None.”
    Bianca looked across the room at her brother and Cathleen thought that her eyes were hard as glass. She appeared to shake her head a little, and then rose and came sinuously across the room towards them.
    “Miss Brown,” she said, when she reached the settee on which they were seated, “you are so like your sister that it gives me quite a shock every time I look at you.” She sank