Lady West did not reply. She put on a stricken, trapped expression, which went well with her widow's weeds. The two gazed into each other's eyes, each waiting for the other to speak. Neither heard a sound at the door until a respectable voice—such a voice as is never possessed save by a British butler or valet—announced "His Grace the Duke of Claremanagh."
CHAPTER II
THE EXPLANATION
A perfectly charming young man came in—a young man so delightful to look at that it seemed almost too much that he should be a duke. With that merry brown face (the war had left a scar across cheek and temple), those Celtic grey eyes, that jet-black hair, that "figure for a fencer," and above all that engaging grin of his, the merest Nobody might hope to make his mark as Somebody.
"Breezing in" (as Emmy had put it), he smiled his nice smile that brought a dimple like a cut line into each thin, tanned cheek. The smile was for Juliet, whose velvet throne was opposite the door, and for her he waved aloft a small, sealed white parcel. Then he saw Lady West, and his expression changed. As the saying is, his "face fell," but in half a second he had controlled his features.
"How do you do?" he enquired. His voice was as pleasant as his grin, but there was a slight stiffness in his tone for the red-haired war-widow.
"I'm going strong, thanks! Going in every sense of the word," Emmy assured him. "I should have taken myself off before now, only Juliet pretended not to be expecting you. Of course, the day before the wedding is supposed by old-fashioned folk to be close time for brides, where their loving bridegrooms are concerned, and so——"
"I'm not old-fashioned," said Claremanagh.
"Rather not! I've every reason for knowing that. We all have. But Juliet had some story about a 'bad luck' superstition. I thought you were the last man to be superstitious, Irish as you are, but it didn't sound like a joke——"
"It wasn't a joke. I'm as superstitious as the deuce about one or two things," the man confessed. "Juliet wasn't 'pretending' but"—and he turned to the girl—"I had to come. There was something I didn't want to explain in a letter, and—hang 'bad luck!' It's a cross dog that would dare bite us."