'No; Mrs. Emsworth is still in America,' he said. 'She has left New York, and gone on tour. I think her tour will be very successful.'
'So glad,' said Sybil. 'Tea?'
'I guess I won't, thank you,' said Bilton; 'I don't want anything. I want just to talk to you.'
Sybil pulled herself together. In other words, she tried to remember that a man in New York, if he crosses an insignificant ocean, is the same man who lands at Liverpool. She succeeded moderately well.
'And how is everybody?' she asked. 'How is Mrs. Palmer, and Amelie, and all the Long Island party?'
'They're all right,' said Bilton. 'Mrs. Palmer's giving a woodland fête this week; it will be very complete, and I guess the sea will come and swallow up Newport. But I didn't come here to talk about Mrs. Palmer.'
He finished taking off his gloves, threw them into his hat, and took a chair exactly opposite her, so that they faced each other as in a waggonette, which to Sybil was an odious vehicle for locomotion. His likeness to Charlie was somehow strangely obliterated to-day; she thought of the latter as of something suffering, in need of protection, whereas the same-featured man who sat opposite her looked particularly capable of self-defence, and, if necessary, of aggression. For the first time she rather feared him, and dislike looked hazily out through the tremor of fear.
'You ran away from America in a great hurry,' he said. 'You left us very desolate.'
Something in this quite harmless speech displeased Sybil immensely.
'Ran away?' she asked.