"To catch the train at Milan--if we start in the motor at ten sharp."
He stared. "The motor? What motor?"
"Why, the new people's--Streffy's tenants. He's never told me their name, and the chauffeur says he can't pronounce it. The chauffeur's is Ottaviano, anyhow; I've been making friends with him. He arrived last night, and he says they're not due at Como till this evening. He simply jumped at the idea of running us over to Milan."
"Good Lord--" said Lansing, when she stopped.
She sprang up from the table with a laugh. "It will be a scramble; but I'll manage it, if you'll go up at once and pitch the last things into your trunk."
"Yes; but look here--have you any idea what it's going to cost?"
She raised her eyebrows gaily. "Why, a good deal less than our railway tickets. Ottaviano's got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn't seen her for six months. When I found that out I knew he'd be going there anyhow."
It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grown to shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to "manage"? "Oh, well," he said to himself, "she's right: the fellow would be sure to be going to Milan."
Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she fitted discordant facts into her life. "When I'm rich," she often said, "the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks."
As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with the struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. "Dearest, do put a couple of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano."
Lansing stared. "Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy's cigars?"
"Packing them, of course.... You don't suppose he meant them for those other people?" She gave him a look of honest wonder.
"I don't know whom he meant them for--but they're not ours...."
She continued to look at him wonderingly. "I don't see what there is to be solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy's either... you may be sure he got them out of some bounder. And there's nothing he'd hate more than to have them passed on to another."