"On the contrary," she said quietly, "you imagine every reason."
Bramham scrambled out of his tight corner as best he might.
"At any rate," he made haste to say, "I am delighted that you have a woman friend who has it in her power to make things as pleasant and interesting as they can be in a place like this."
"Thank you," she said; "and, dear friend—you need not be anxious for me. I only confess where I am sure of absolution and the secrecy of the confessional—never to women."
Bramham, first pleased, then annoyed, then sulky over this piece of information, made no immediate response, and a waiter appearing at the moment to inquire whether they would take lunch, the matter dropped. He followed in the wake of her charming lilac gown, through tessellated squares and palm-gardens, with the glow of personal satisfaction every right-minded man feels in accompanying the prettiest and best turned-out woman in the place.
When they were seated at the pleasantest corner of the room, and she had ordered without fuss an excellently dainty lunch, Bramham's desire being to sit with his elbows on the table and dip into the depths of lilac eyes lashed with black above two faintly-tinted cheek-bones, he reverted to his sulky demeanour. But a scarlet mouth was smiling at him whimsically.
"Don't let us be cross! Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, you know; and you are the best of all possible confessors. There is nothing I can hide from you. I am even going to tell you where I got my pretty clothes from, and the money to be careering about the world and staying at the Royal—I know you are consumed with apprehension on these two points."
She smiled at him with such comradeship that he could not sulk any longer.
"Well, you know the last time I saw you, you were in hard-luck street, at a guinea a week, and too proud to use a friend's purse. I suppose you have been getting on?"
"You suppose rightly: I have got on. I have three plays running at London theatres, two novels selling well, and a book of poems in its tenth edition—not bad for poems, you know."