Her face when she turned told him nothing.
"I spent the greater part of the morning sitting under the palms facing the bay, talking to Mrs. Portal—but I left a message where I was to be found in case you called."
"Mrs. Portal! I didn't know you knew her."
"Yes; she and I met when I was in Durban, and became friends. She happened to be lunching here yesterday when I arrived, and she came up and spoke to me. You can imagine what it meant to have someone welcoming me as she did, after long exile from my own land—but, if you know her at all, you know how kind and lovely her ways are."
"Yes, indeed," Bramham heartily agreed. "She is altogether charming."
All the same, he was astonished. Mrs. Portal was charming, but she stood for orthodoxy, and the girl before him was mysteriously unorthodox—to say the least of it.
"I am dining with her to-night to meet her great friend, Mrs. Capron," continued Poppy, eyeing him gravely.
"Then you ought to be careful," he blurted out; "for you are dining with the two most precise and conventional women in the place"—here he perceived himself to be blundering—"but I may also say the most delightful," he added hastily.
"Ah! and why shouldn't I?" she queried softly, but her tone brought a slight flush to Bramham's cheek.
"Oh, I don't know," he stammered. "No reason at all, I imagine."