The hall seemed to grow suddenly dark. Miss von Schwarzenberg leaned against the big table as she unwound her scarf.
"Is your friend given to these sudden—a—these flirtations?" Napier asked in his lightest tone.
Miss von Schwarzenberg spoke of "several little affairs." She couldn't say how far they had gone. "You know the American standard in these things isn't ours." She spoke of the sanctity, the binding character, of the German betrothal.
While this recital was going on, Napier's thoughts were nearer the Scots' Inn than the scene of the German Polterabend.
Should he or shouldn't he?
He knew quite well he could prevent this American girl's being shunted on to the London line. Suppose he didn't prevent it? Julian would never know how easily Napier could have kept Nan Ellis in Scotland.
Should he or shouldn't he?
Suddenly it occurred to him how extraordinarily serious he was being about this trifle. What could it matter whether this little American tourist spent a few weeks in Scotland or went to London to-morrow? Napier knew, looking back, that he had no faintest prevision of the difference that the girl's going or her staying would make, even to Julian. And all the same he stood there in the middle of Kirklamont Hall with the oddest sense of compulsion upon him.
He must see to it that the girl didn't go.
"I'm far from being unsympathetic to,"—he moved his head in the general direction of the "Queen of Scots." "But, speaking of flirtation, I can't help hoping your friend won't carry my friend off to London."