On reaching the end of the long piazza, Sibley led Ida to a veranda little frequented at that hour, saying, as he did so:
"Let us get away from prying eyes. I always feel when with you that three is an enormous crowd."
A gentleman who had been smoking rose hastily at this broad hint, which he could not help overhearing, and walked haughtily away.
Ida, with a regret deeper than she could have thought possible, saw that it was Van Berg. Her first impulse was to compel her companion to go back; but that would look like following him. Weary, disheartened by the fate that seemed ever against her, she sank into the chair he had just vacated.
For a time she did not heed or scarcely hear Sibley's characteristic flatteries, but at last he said plainly:
"Miss Ida, do you know that you are the one woman of all the world to me?"
"Oh, hush!" she replied, rising. "I know you say that to every pretty woman who will listen to you, as I shall no longer to-night. Come."
Baffled and puzzled also by the moody girl, who of late seemed so different from her former self, he had no resource but to accompany her back to the main entrance. Here, where the eyes of others were upon her, she said abruptly, but with a charming smile:
"Good-night, Mr. Sibley," and went directly to her room.
The young man looked rather nonplussed and muttered an oath as he walked away to console himself after the fashion of his kind.