“Very likely,” he answered. “I am fairly well known here. I must apologize, I suppose, for speaking to you, but your appearance certainly indicated that you were in some sort of trouble, and you were becoming—pardon me—an object of comment to the passers-by.”
The girl sat up and looked at him with a curious twist at the corners of her mouth—humorous or pathetic, he could not tell which. As though accidentally she swept her skirts from a chair close drawn to her own. Sir John hesitated. She was marvellously pretty, but he was not quite sure—yet—that it was advisable for him to sit with her in so public a place. His inclinations prompted him most decidedly to take the vacant chair. Prudence reminded him that he was a county magistrate, and parliamentary candidate for a somewhat difficult borough, where his principal supporters were dissenters of strict principles who took a zealous interest in his moral character. He temporized, and the girl raised her eyes once more to his.
“You are the Sir John Ferringhall who has bought the Lyndmore estate, are you not?” she remarked. “My father’s sisters used once to live in the old manor house. I believe you have had it pulled down, have you not?”
“The Misses Pellissier!” he exclaimed. “Then your name——”
“My name is Pellissier. My father was Colonel Pellissier. He had an appointment in Jersey, you know, after he left the army.”
Sir John did not hesitate any longer. He sat down.
“Upon my word,” he exclaimed, “this is most extraordinary. I——”
Then he stopped short, for he began to remember things. He was not quite sure whether, after all, he had been wise. He would have risen again, but for the significance of the action.
“Dear me!” he said. “Then some of your family history is known to me. One of your aunts died, I believe, and the other removed to London.”
The girl nodded.