“Somebody else?” he asked abruptly. “Who is it?”
Lilith shrugged her shoulders, and laughed mischievously.
“Ah, that’s more than I can tell you. All the information I can give you is that he is very, very good-looking, that he met her to-day in the park, and walked a little way with her as she came back from the town, and that she looked very much confused when she met me in the garden, and would have liked, I’m sure, to think I hadn’t seen her.”
Now there was a little mischief in this speech, for Lilith did not think Chris had behaved quite well in pretending not to know whom she meant when she described the stranger present at the tableaux. But, to do her justice, she had not the least intention of rousing the real anger she instantly saw in Mr. Bradfield’s face. Not only in his face either, for Lilith felt, when his hand next touched hers in the dance, that he was trembling with rage.
“Oh, ho!” said he, with an exclamation which was meant to sound like a laugh, but which was, in truth, anything but mirthful; “so she meets a sweetheart on the quiet, does she?”
Lilith, rather frightened, and seeing that she had made more serious mischief than she had intended hastened to answer:
“Oh, no, no; I didn’t mean that. I daresay it was only an accidental meeting. I—I——”
Mr. Bradfield interrupted her sternly.
“Have you ever seen him before, this fellow whom she met?”
“Only once,” answered Lilith, quickly.