Luckily, no such suspicion could be in the Frenchman's head, for he had not seen Pavoya slip into the house. Jack glanced at him, and saw that he had laid the Duke's seal ring on the table beside the sealed packet. He was looking at the safe, but showed no surprise at finding it open. For him, it had been prepared to receive the pearls. "_There's_ a good little hidie-hole!" said Pat. "Now I'll sign the receipt, Monsieur, and you may go to your engagement with a light heart." He went back to the table, took the box, and tossed it into the aperture in the wall. Then he closed the steel door, did something to it which the eyes of neither man could follow, and pulled down the concealing bookshelf. A moment later he was scrawling "Claremanagh" on the paper which Defasquelle rather sulkily put into his hand. CHAPTER VII WHAT JULIET TOLD JACK At five minutes before five o'clock Jack Manners entered the Palm Room of the Hotel Lorne. This room adjoined the restaurant, and was crowded with small tables lit by pink-shaded electric candles. The Lorne was a good hotel, but too stodgily respectable to be amusing. As there was no band at meal times or tea time, its clients were mostly unmodern creatures with a strange preference for peace and quiet. It was well that Jack had arrived before the hour fixed, for at five precisely Juliet appeared. He had already engaged a table in a secluded corner half screened by drooping, feather-like branches; but his eyes were on the door, and he sprang up as the tall, girlish figure drifted in between two palms. At sight of his boyhood's love, his heart gave a bound. How lovely she was in her sheathlike grey dress, with dangling silvery things, like clouds of dawn filming a pale sunrise sky! Her hat was simple yet quaint, pushing forward her bright hair, and making her face look young as a child's--pathetically young. Yes, "pathetic" was the word, Jack thought as he went to meet her, and she came hastening to him as to a haven. And "pathetic" was a new word in connection with Juliet Phayre! She had been proud, fantastic, absurd, charming, obstinate, unaccountable, and a hundred other things, but never pathetic. Manners wondered if it could be the dip of her odd hat-brim which gave her that look of transparent pallor, and the blue shadows under her big eyes.