"Not a word! He knows you were travelling to Bristol; so much you said yourself. But for my part, I have never breathed a word of the matter to a living soul." And we went in. The Countess held out her hand to me with a conscious timidity.
"You are not angered?" she said, in a low voice.
The mere thought that she should take such heed of what I might feel, made my pulses leap with joy. She seemed to recognise, as I should never have dared to do myself, that I had a right to be jealous, and her words almost granted me a claim upon her conduct. For answer I bent over her hand and kissed it, and behind me again I heard Elmscott chuckling.
Hugh Marston had risen from his chair as we entered, and stood looking at me curiously.
"You have not met Mr. Marston," she said. "I must make my two best friends acquainted."
I would that she had omitted that word "best," the more especially since she laid some emphasis upon it. It undid some portion of her previous work, and set us both upon a level in her estimation.
"We have met before," said Marston, and he bowed coldly.
"Indeed? I had not heard of that."
Marston recounted to her the story of the gambling-match, but she listened with no apparent attention, fixing her eyes upon the stage.
"I fancied, Mr. Buckler, you had no taste for cards or dice," she said carelessly, when he had done.