"You're not eating anything, sweetheart. Wouldn't it be as well, just for decency's sake? There's a comic ending to this story, so you mustn't be sad. Who's that boy scowling at me on the other side of the table? What's the matter with the child?"
"Never mind," murmured Priscilla hastily. "He doesn't mean anything. Please go on."
He began to laugh at her with gentle ridicule.
"Impatient for the third act? Well, the scheme worked all right. But it so chanced that the woman decided to be subtle, too. She knew him for an old friend the instant she saw him. But he pretended to have forgotten that old affair in New York. He didn't want her to feel in any way under an obligation. So he played the humble stranger, and she—sweetheart—she played the simple, country maiden, and she did it to perfection. I think, you know, that she was a little afraid her name and title would frighten him away."
"And so he humoured her?" said Priscilla, a slight quiver in her deep voice.
"They humoured each other, sweetheart. That was where it began to be funny. Now I am going to get you to tell me the rest of the story."
She turned towards him again, her face very pale.
"Yes; it's very funny, no doubt—funny for the man, I mean; for the woman, I am not so sure. How does she know that he really cared for her from the beginning; that he was always quite honest in his motive? How can she possibly know this?"
Again for a moment their eyes met. There was no hint of dismay in the man's brown face.
"She does know it, sweetheart," he answered, with confidence. "I can't tell you how. Probably she couldn't, either. He was going to explain everything, you know, under the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. But for some reason it didn't come off. He spent three solid hours waiting for her, but she didn't come. She had found him out, perhaps? And was angry?"