“Lady Naselton, who is that man?” I asked her. “What do you know of him?”
“My dear child,” she answered, “from the confidential manner in which you have been talking all this time, I should have imagined that he had told you his history from childhood. Frankly, I don’t know anything about him at all. He was very good to Fred in South America, and he has made a lot of money, that is really all I know. Fred met him in town, and brought him down without notice. I hope,” she added, looking at my pale face, “that he has been behaving himself properly.”
“I have no fault to find with him,” I answered. “I was curious, that is all.”
“I am so glad, dear,” she answered, smiling. “For a millionaire you know, I don’t consider him at all unpresentable, do you?”
I smiled faintly. Poor Lady Naselton!
“He did not strike me as being remarkably objectionable,” I answered. “He is a little awkward, and very confidential.”
Lady Naselton piloted me across the room towards the Romneys, with her arm linked in mine.
“We must make a few allowances, my dear,” she whispered, confidentially. “One cannot have everything nowadays. He is really not so bad, and the money is quite safe. In diamonds, or something, Fred says. It is quite a million.”
I glanced back to him as I stood talking with the Romneys. He was sitting quietly where I had left him, watching me covertly. His black eyebrows were drawn together, and a certain look of anxiety seemed to have sharpened his sallow features. His eyes fell at once before mine. I felt that I would have given everything I possessed in the world to have known who he was.