“Where was that? Was she with him?”
“N—no, she wasn’t with him. It was the day of the tableaux. He was sitting on one of the back seats, and nobody seemed to know who he was. Not even Chris, for I asked her.”
Mr. Bradfield was evidently much puzzled. All the golden youth of Wyngham and the neighbourhood were dancing in his drawing-rooms that night, and who the fortunate young man could be who was considered good-looking by such a connoisseur as Lilith, and whom Chris condescended to meet on the sly, he had not the remotest notion. Certainly a man’s ideas of another man’s good looks differed considerably from those of a girl; but he could not, running over in his mind the eligible young men of the neighbourhood, conceive that any one of them should find favour in the very particular eyes of both the beauties.
With his usual directness, he set about solving the mystery at once. Taking Lilith back to her mother as soon as the dance was over, he went in search of Chris, whom he found sitting in the dining-room, eating an ice, and looking bored by young Cullingworth’s conversation.
“Miss Christina, I want to speak to you,” said he, shortly.
Chris, upon whom a hazy dread began to fall, as to the subject upon which he wished to interrogate her, followed him with reluctance into the embrasure of the window, which had been kept free from refreshment tables on purpose for tête-à-têtes of a more or less interesting sort.
CHAPTER XIX. MR. BRADFIELD RECEIVES A SHOCK.
Mr. Bradfield commanded rather than invited Chris to be seated, and planted himself in a rather menacing than lover-like attitude before her. He had just remembered, luckily for him, that he must tone down his martinet-like manner, as he had no claim whatever on the girl to give him a right to be offended.