“I doubt it, greatly. However, I do not mean to try. I mean to amuse myself, and if you are always thinking of one person it is impossible to do so.”
She talked in this strain a little longer and then rose and went to the piano, and presently her wonderfully clear and ringing voice filled the room. The men present stood around her, except Lord Dereham, who remained in the supper-room with Linda Falconer.
“How excited Kathleen Weir is to-night! Do you think she has taken too much champagne?” remarked Linda of her friend.
Dereham laughed.
“Can’t tell,” he said; “but that was all rot she talked.”
“Do you mean about love?” asked Linda, softly, and for a moment she looked in Dereham’s face, and then cast down her beautiful eyes with a sigh.
“Yes,” he answered, ardently, and he bent forward and took her white hand. “I believe in it—and—and Linda, don’t you?”
“I—try not to think of it,” she half-whispered.
“But why?”
“Because—ah, Dereham, you must not ask;” and again she sighed.