“Can’t we have some milk at the vacherie Suisse?” Grey heard a woman’s voice ask in the English of the well-bred.
And then a man rejoined:
“Milk! What for? There’s still an unopened case of champagne in the coach.”
Again the laughter echoed, but nearer. The little company were coming towards them, hidden by the shrubbery. A second later and they came into view—a tall, large woman with brilliant auburn hair, in gown and hat of pale lavender; a middle-aged man, red-faced and well-groomed; a dainty little dark woman, all in red, with a tall, dark man in grey, and then—Grey went white as the whitest cloud overhead, for Hope Van Tuyl was approaching, and with her was the young man from the Embassy whom he had seen yesterday at the hotel. And there was Frothingham, too, whom he had not recognised at first glance; and it was Nicholas Van Tuyl, he saw now, who was with the red-haired woman in the lead.
For a second he halted, undecided, a powerful impulse urging him to speak to the woman he loved, at all hazards. His lips were framing words, his eyes were beaming, his hand was half way to his hat, before his judgment came to the rescue—and held him; told him that it would be folly, that now as never before it was his duty to maintain his disguise and thereby eventually establish his innocence. His eyes cooled, his teeth closed on his embryo utterance, his hand dropped to his side.
“Carey Grey!”
Hope’s voice rang out suddenly above the babble of the party. She had seen him and recognised him. The others had passed on. Only she and Edson were there beside him. With an effort that cost him the most poignant torture he ever suffered he turned to Minna, murmuring words that had no meaning and walked heedlessly by.
Edson caught Miss Van Tuyl’s trembling arm.
“Sh!” he warned, a little excitedly; “you’ve made a mistake. That isn’t Grey.”
“But”—and the colour came and went in her face and she breathed quickly—“but I know it is. I know him, I’m sure; oh, quite, quite sure. I cannot be mistaken. His hair is changed; yes, and he has a beard, but his eyes—I should always know his eyes; and”—as she stood gazing after him—“his shoulders. There isn’t another man in the world who has shoulders just like Carey Grey’s.”