“Bear with me a moment. This is so strange a meeting. I....” she stopped, and bit her lip and smiled and sighed.
I watched her quite unmoved by this display. “Yes, it is very strange,” I said.
Next, as if having regained self-possession and desirous of getting away from an embarrassing situation, she said, unexpectedly, and almost crudely: “Won’t you sit down, Cha— Mr. Bergwyn?” She made the correction palpable, then added: “I should apologise for my excitement having betrayed me into calling you by—by the name once so familiar. I am still liable to impulses.”
I accepted the position thus suggested, sat down and answered in a tone of conventional compliment: “So beautiful a woman as you, Baroness, need never think of apologising for anything.”
“At all events I will try not to offend again,” she said lightly. “I suppose that really I ought not to have come to you in this way, but have waited until we met. You are so great a man now.”
“You had some reason for coming, of course. Shall we discuss that?”
“Oh, yes, I had a reason; but I find it so hard to explain it now.” Her manner now was that of a sort of engaging nervousness. “I declare I could almost wish you were a stranger, Mr. Bergwyn. It would be less difficult.”
This was my chance and I took it. “You may really regard me as a stranger, Baroness;” I said, gravely, with emphasis; but she smiled winningly, intentionally disregarding my meaning, and replied with great sweetness:
“You were always considerate.” She paused and continued then with a glance:
“I had my reasons for coming to you, of course. I suppose I may be frank. In the first place I wished to be sure that you were the Mr. Bergwyn who knew me before I came to Belgrade.”