Bernadette Lisle's foray on the shops of Paris, undertaken in preparation for the London season, was of so extensive an order as to leave her hardly an hour of the day to herself; and in the evenings the friends with whom she was staying—Mrs. and Miss Stacey Jenkinson, Europeanised Americans and most popular people—insisted on her society. So it was with the greatest difficulty that she had at last got away by herself and was able to come to lunch.
"Though even now," she told Oliver Wyse, as they sat down together at the Café de Paris, "it's a secret assignation. I'm supposed to be trying on hats!"
"All the sweeter for secrecy, and I suppose we're not visible to more than two hundred people."
He had a fine voice, not loud but full and resonant. There were many things about him that Bernadette liked—his composure, his air of being equal to all things, his face and hands browned by the sun in southern climes, his keen eyes quickly taking in a character or apprehending a mood. But most of all to her fancy was his voice. She told him so now with her usual naturalness.
"It is pleasant to hear your voice again." She gave him a quick merry glance. "Do you mind my saying that?"
"Yes, I hate compliments."
"I'm sorry." She was chaffing him, but she did it with a subtle little touch of deference, quite unlike anything in her manner towards either her husband or her new toy, Cousin Arthur. In this again she was, while pretty, natural. Oliver Wyse was a dozen years her senior, and a distinguished man. He had a career behind him in the Colonial Service, a career of note, and was supposed to have another still in front of him in the directorate of a great business with world-wide interests. To take up this new work—very congenial and promising much wealth, which had not hitherto come his way—he had bade farewell to employment under Government. Some said his resignation had been hailed with relief since he did not count among his many virtues that of being a very docile subordinate. His representations were apt to be more energetic, his interpretation of orders less literal, than official superiors at the other end of the cable desired. So with many compliments and a Knight Commandership of the appropriate Order he was gracefully suffered to depart.
"But a jolly little lunch like this is worth a lot of meetings at squashes and so on, isn't it? By the way, you didn't come to mine the other day, Sir Oliver." (She referred to the party which Mr. Arthur Lisle had attended.)
"I don't like squashes."
"Compliments and squashes! Anything else? I want to know what to avoid, please." She rested her chin on her hand and looked at him with an air of wondering how far she could safely go in her banter.