“Oh, it’s still the same one, the mysterious stranger I saw in the barn on the evening of the tableaux vivants.”
“What!” said Chris, turning suddenly crimson, while the tears rushed into her eyes. “It is more than two months since then. This is constancy indeed.”
“It’s so easy to be constant down here,” sighed Lilith. “And I admit that I might have wavered a little before now in my devotion if I hadn’t seen, or thought I had seen, my handsome stranger in town the other day, when I went up with mamma to do some shopping.”
To her astonishment, Chris sprang up from her sofa in great excitement.
“You saw him? You saw him?” cried she, all her old animation in her face, the old ring in her voice.
Lilith looked at her in amazement.
“Why, Chris, who was he? You pretended you didn’t know.”
But the light had already died out of her companion’s eyes. Sighing heavily she answered:
“Indeed it was true that I did not then know whom you meant. And if you did really see him yesterday, why, then he was not the person I have since supposed him to have been.”
Lilith, who had heard rumours of the flirtation, or attachment between Chris and the alleged lunatic, was full of interest and curiosity.