“My entertainment seems to be turning into a children’s treat,” Sylvia muttered to herself. “Sic itur ad astra.”
“I beg your pardon, miss, did you say to show her in?”
Sylvia nodded.
Presently a tall young woman in the late twenties, with large and brilliant gray eyes, rose-flushed and deep in furs, came in, accompanied by an extraordinarily handsome boy of seven or eight.
“How awfully good of you to let me waste a few minutes of your time,” she said, and as she spoke, Sylvia had a fleeting illusion that it was herself who was speaking, a sensation infinitely rapid, but yet sufficiently clear to make her ask herself the meaning of it, and to find in the stranger’s hair the exact replica of her own. The swift illusion and the equally swift comparison were fled before she had finished inviting her visitor to sit down.
“I must explain who I am. I’ve heard about you, oh, of course, publicly, but also from my brother.”
“Your brother?” repeated Sylvia.
“Yes, Michael Fane.”
“He’s not with you?”
“No. I wish he had been. Alas! he’s gone off to look for a friend who, by the way, I expect you know also. Maurice Avery? All sorts of horrid rumors about what had happened to him in Morocco were being brought back to us, so Michael went off last spring, and has been with him ever since.”