"It's a little vacation I'm taking," ventured the sub-editor.
"Sorry you delayed it so long," rejoined the baronet, still more acidly.
"We were fortunate enough to secure rooms on the same corridor with you at your hotel," Mrs. Veynol disclosed.
"Mr. O'Connor again, I assume," said Carleigh. "As capable a courier as an editor—I mean as a sub-editor."
"Sir Caryll is pleased to be ironical," snapped the young Irishman, boiling.
"I'm not pleased at all," Sir Caryll replied equivocally. "Ordinarily I am most complacent, but I can't bear a sneaking, snooting busybody who's always attending to every one's business but his own."
O'Connor's fists doubled, but Mrs. Veynol laid a quieting hand on his curving shoulder.
"Caryll, dear," she soothed, "you are unjust. You are, really. Mr. O'Connor has served me at great personal sacrifice. I don't know what I should have done without him. When I learned that Rosamond was not at San Remo—had never been there—I was torn with anxiety. Fancy the feelings of a fond mother! I applied to Mr. O'Connor in my extremity, and he proved himself a friend in need."
Carleigh turned away, but no less vexed. In his wife's eyes he saw tears glistening. And they had been so inexpressibly happy.
He was tempted to allude to British Society's theory of why his engagement had been broken—to inquire about the convict first husband—his Rosamond's own father—but he resisted the impulse, determining, nevertheless, to thresh out the matter with Mrs. Veynol privately at the first opportunity.