Lady Quaintree, remembering that the young men were strangers to each other, introduced them.
“If you should happen to make a longer stay in town than you count on,” she said, “we shall be very pleased to see you, either this evening, or to-morrow, or at any time it may suit you to come. I find my lord’s illness is not of so serious a nature as at first appeared.”
An interchange of civil smiles, a shake or two of the hand, some polite valedictory salutations, and the brief whirling scene was over—past as a dream.
“I think I was right,” murmured Blanche, in her friend’s ear, as they drove off in Lady Quaintree’s luxurious carriage.
Lois tightly pressed the hand that tenderly sought her own; but did not meet Blanche’s eye, which she feared for the moment.
Paul Desfrayne threw himself into a hansom.
“Alderman’s Lane,” he cried to the driver.
CHAPTER XXIV.
FRANK AMBERLEY’S ADVICE.
Captain Desfrayne was at first so eager and vehement, that Frank Amberley found it a little difficult to disentangle the strange story he had to tell.