Page:Vance--The trey o hearts.djvu/25

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THE MESSAGE OF THE ROSE
11

strange that he hesitated to accept it. It wouldn't do to jump at conclusions and make one's self ridiculous. Very probably it hadn't come from her at all, but was just an everyday coincidence.

But there was that Trey of Hearts! Now what the deuce did the Trey of Hearts mean?

Now in heraldry the word Trine signifies a group of three. And the Trey of Hearts is a group of three. And the surname of that Rose of his heart's desire was Trine.

Was the card then simply her way of fixing beyond question the identity of the sender of the rose?

Alan ambled aimlessly into Cockspur Street, and of a sudden found himself at a dead halt, transfixed by a poster in one of the show windows.

The poster advertised the newest steamship in the trans-Atlantic service, and the artist had seen fit to delineate his subject at the moment of drawing away from a pierhead in the foreground, on which pierhead a young woman was shown waving a farewell handkerchief—a lithe, sweet silhouette in white with red roses at her belt posed against a sea of burning blue.

Mr. Law drew an incredulous, lemon-gloved hand across his bewildered forehead.

"Three times in the same place in thirty minutes!" he muttered blankly, "There's something uncanny about this … If life itself were not a riddle