"Nothing shall induce me to talk politics or empire-saving to-night," he declared, with a smile. "I have other things to say."
"Tell me why you asked us all to dine so suddenly," she enquired. "I do not know whether it is my fancy, but there seems to be an air of celebration about. Is there any announcement to be made?"
He shook his head.
"None. The party was just a whim of Maggie's."
They both looked across towards the ballroom, where she was dancing with Chalmers.
"Maggie is very beautiful to-night," Naida said. "I could scarcely listen to my neighbour's conversation at dinner time for looking at her. Yet she has the air all the time of living in a dream, as though something had happened which had lifted her right away from us all. I began to wonder," she added, "whether, after all, Oscar Immelan had not told me the truth, and whether we should not be drinking her health and yours before the evening was over."
"You could scarcely believe that," he whispered, "if you have any memory at all."
There was a faint touch of pink in her cheeks, a tinge of colour as delicate as the passing of a gleam of sunshine over a sea-glistening shell.
"But Englishmen are so unfaithful," she sighed.
"Then I at least am an exception," Nigel answered swiftly. "The words which you checked upon my lips the last time we were alone together still live in my heart. I think, Naida, the time has come to say them."