“Is my sister’s Christian name, then, of so much importance to you?” she asked with a faint smile.
“The things involved in it are,” he answered gravely.
She accepted his rejoinder with a brief nod. Courtlaw opened his lips, but remained silent in the face of her imperative gesture. “Let me hasten,” she said, “to reassure you. My sister was scarcely likely to make a mistake. She told you—the truth.”
Courtlaw’s walking stick, which he had been handling, fell with a crash to the ground. He stooped to recover it, and his face was hidden. Sir John felt and looked several years younger.
“I am much obliged to you,” he said. “Really, I do not know why I should have doubted it.”
“Nor I,” she remarked tersely.
He looked at her with a certain curiosity. She was a very elegant young woman, slightly taller perhaps than her sister, and with an air of reserved strength underneath her quiet face and manner which Annabel may have lacked. It was hard to associate her with the stories which he and all Paris had heard of “Alcide.”
“You, then,” he said, “are ‘Alcide.’ That wonderful poster—is of you.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“I am sorry,” she said, “if you find the likeness unsatisfactory. My friends consider it wonderfully faithful. Have you any more questions to ask me?”