She passed through the door, but when I had closed it and prepared to lock it, I found that the key was no longer in the lock. I looked on the floor—I felt in my pockets, and at last, wandering back into the kitchen, discovered it on the table, where I swear I never put it.
When I had fitted that key into the lock and turned it, and got out of the window and made that fast, I dropped into the yard. No one shared its solitude with me. I searched garden and pleasure grounds, but never a glimpse of pink rewarded my anxious eyes. I found the sundial again, and stretched myself along the warm brick of the wide step where she had sat: and called myself a fool.
I had let her go. I did not know her name; I did not know where she lived; she had been at the inn, but probably only for lunch. I should never see her again, and certainly in that event I should never see again such dark, soft eyes, such hair, such a contour of cheek and chin, such a frank smile—in a word, a girl with whom it would be so delightfully natural for me to fall in love. For all the time she had been talking to me of architecture and archæology, of dates and periods, of carvings and mouldings, I had been recklessly falling in love with the idea of falling in love with her. I had cherished and adored this delightful possibility, and now my chance was over. Even I could not definitely fall in love after one interview with a girl I was never to see again! And falling in love is so pleasant! I cursed my lost chance, and went back to the inn. I talked to the waiter.
“Yes, a lady in pink had lunched there with a party. Had gone on to the Castle. A party from Tonbridge it was.”
Barnhurst Castle is close to Sefton Manor. The inn lays itself out to entertain persons who come in brakes and carve their names on the walls of the Castle keep. The inn has a visitors’ book. I examined it. Some twenty feminine names. Any one might be hers. The waiter looked over my shoulder. I turned the pages.
“Only parties staying in the house in this part of the book,” said the waiter.
My eye caught one name. “Selwyn Sefton,” in a clear, round, black hand-writing.
“Staying here?” I pointed to the name.
“Yes, sir; came to-day, sir.”
“Can I have a private sitting-room?”