It was the stranger herself: the woman for whom they had all been vainly searching!
"Good morning!" said Vashti, with a self-possessed little bow. "Oh, but I fear I have startled you?"
"Ah—er—" the Lord Proprietor pulled himself together with an effort—"Well, to tell the truth? you did take me by surprise; the more so that——"
"It was dreadfully uncivil of me—not to say impudent—to walk in here unannounced. But the fact is I could find no door along the terrace; nothing but windows. Forgive me."
"Certainly, madam, certainly.... The front door is, so to speak, at the rear of the building.... But I was going to say that you took me the more by surprise because, as a matter of fact, I had just given up hunting for you."
Vashti laughed. She looked adorably cool and provoking; and still, as he stared at her, the Lord Proprietor wondered more and more whence in the world she came. He knew little of female beauty (the late Lady Hutchins had been plain-featured) and less of clothes; but three or four times in his life, at public functions, he had mixed with the great ones of the land, and here patently was one of them. Her speech, dress, bearing, all proclaimed it; her easy self-possession, too, and air of authority. Out of what Olympus had she descended upon these remote Atlantic isles?
"I saw that you had company," she answered, "and I ran away. To tell you the truth I was a little afraid of them—that is to say, of some of them. But what was Archelaus doing here?"
The Lord Proprietor frowned.
"Did he come to apologise? Oh, but that is just one of the reasons that brought me here! You must not be angry with Archelaus; no, really, it was not his fault, at all, but mine."
"I think, ma'am," said the Lord Proprietor, "we are talking at cross-purposes."