"Michael Howard Arranstoun of Arranstoun over the border in Scotland—like Gretna Green."
"How romantic that sounds," Madame Imogen chimed in. "Why, it's a name fit for a stage play I do think. A party of my friends visited that very castle only last fall. Mrs. Howard dear, it's as well known as the Trossachs to investigators of the antique!"
"Wonderfully interesting!" Sabine remarked blandly—putting more sugar in her tea—at which Michael's eyebrows raised themselves in a whimsical way—back had rushed to him the recollection that on the only occasion they had ever drunk tea together before, she had said that she liked "lumps and lumps of it!"
"You probably know England?" he hazarded politely.
"Very little. I was once there for a month when I was a child; we went to see Windermere and the Lakes."
"You got no further north? That was a pity, our country is most beautiful—but it is not too late—you may go there yet some day."
"Who knows?" and she laughed gaily—she had to allow herself some outlet, she felt she would otherwise have screamed.
Michael looked away out to sea and he told himself he must not tease her any more. She was astonishingly game—so astonishingly game that but for the name "Howard" he could have almost believed that this young woman was his Sabine's double—but he remembered now that she had said she was going to call herself Mrs. Howard because otherwise she would not be able to "have any fun!"
He had never recollected it since, not even when Henry had told him the lady of his heart was called Howard—obscured by his friend's assertion that her husband was an American, he had not for an instant suspected the least connection with himself.
Until he could find out the meaning of all this comedy, he must not let Henry have an idea that there was anything underneath; and then with a pang of mortification and pain he remembered his promise to Henry—and he clenched his hands in his coat pockets, he was indeed tied and bound.