Temple bowed, with no flicker of recognition visible in his face. But Betty, flushing scarlet, said:
"Mr. Temple and I have met before."
There was the tiniest pause. Then Temple said: "I am so glad to meet you again. I thought you had perhaps left Paris."
"Let me give you some tea," said Vernon.
Tea was made for her,—and conversation. She drank the tea, but she seemed not to know what to do with the conversation.
It fluttered, aimlessly, like a bird with a broken wing. Lady St. Craye did her best, but talk is not easy when each one of a party has its own secret pre-occupying interest, and an overlapping interest in the preoccupation of the others. The air was too electric.
Lady St. Craye had it on her lips that she must go—when Betty rose suddenly.
"Good-bye," she said generally, looking round with miserable eyes that tried to look merely polite.
"Must you go?" asked Vernon, furious with the complicated emotions that, warring in him, left him just as helpless as anyone else.
"I do hope we shall meet again," said Lady St. Craye.