"It is this--to have enough faith in me to accept my word. There is something in my past life, something which the world might think of no great consequence, something I will tell you all about when we are married. It will be a confession, but I repented of it long before I ever met you, and I have repented of it a thousand times more since."
"I could not marry any man whose word I could disbelieve," replied Lucy with calm confidence.
They walked together until within a square of the hotel, when Lucy demanded that Sir Percy should leave her.
The evening of the Embassy dinner came, and Sir Percy Carlyon, who always acted as assistant host, was the first guest to arrive. Almost immediately General Talbott and Alicia Vernon followed. Alicia, like most Englishwomen, was at her best in the evening. She was one of those rare women who could wear jewels in her hair and look well, and to-night she sparkled with gems. No woman could cross a drawing-room floor with more grace than Alicia Vernon, or could sit and rise and bow with greater dignity. She was more like an enthroned queen than a pretty princess such as Lucy Armytage's air and manner suggested when she entered the drawing-room. Nevertheless their charms were so different that they enhanced, rather than outshone, each other. Lucy carried in her hands a huge bouquet of violets. They had been Sir Percy's gift, and a whispered word of thanks, unnoticed by any one, repaid him. Alicia Vernon, apparently absorbed in conversation with various persons who were introduced to her, after the American fashion, watched closely every woman as she entered the room. She was the last woman in the world to underrate her rival, and with discernment saw that this black-haired girl with the milk-white skin was easily the most attractive woman present. Mrs. Chantrey and Eleanor were the last to arrive. The former wore at least a quart of large diamonds strewn over her person, and, recalling with triumph that this was her third dinner at the Embassy during the season, considered herself as good as married to Lord Baudesert, and adopted condescending airs towards weak Mrs. Vereker. Alicia had claimed a woman's prescience in matters of the heart. She felt instinctively that the beautiful Eleanor Chantrey was not the woman whom Sir Percy loved.
Not a soul except herself at the long, brilliant dinner-table suspected anything between Sir Percy Carlyon and Lucy Armytage, who sat opposite each other. But Alicia Vernon's violet eyes saw everything without watching. She knew the English habit of not conversing across the table, but she observed that Sir Percy Carlyon spoke to Lucy Armytage once or twice. Lucy, herself, instead of answering him with the gaiety and spirit she showed in her conversation with her neighbours, replied to Sir Percy with only a brilliant smile and a word or two. The indications were so slight that not even the hawk-eyed Lord Baudesert noticed them, but nothing escapes a jealous woman.
Meanwhile, never had Alicia Vernon exerted herself more to please. She sat on Lord Baudesert's right hand and on her left was Senator March. Mrs. Vernon was a better listener than talker. She had not the naïve effervescence of the American women, but she had a softness, a charming air of listening with profound attention, which few American women ever acquire. Senator March, struck from the beginning by her manner of the highest breeding, admiring her mature beauty and charmed by her subtle and even silent flattery, thought it the pleasantest dinner he had ever attended. Eleanor Chantrey sat on the other side of him and he experienced a glow of pleasure which a man feels when he basks in beauty's light. But Eleanor Chantrey was not much older than Lucy Armytage and her range of conversation was strictly limited to what had happened since she came out in society. Senator March had passed his fiftieth birthday and liked to talk about things which happened twenty-five years before. He had an agreeable feeling with Mrs. Vernon of being contemporaries, which he could not feel with a younger woman. Alicia Vernon, on her part, recognised Senator March's virtues as a dinner man and was tactful enough to keep to herself the surprise she felt at finding an American so accomplished.
When the ladies left the table and the gentlemen's ranks were closed up for that comfortable after-dinner conversation, which is still the heritage of the Englishman, Lord Baudesert took pains to bring General Talbott and Senator March into conversation together. Between the two men a good understanding was instantly established. General Talbott did not lose interest in Senator March's eyes for being the father of the charming woman who had sat next him. With the frank friendliness of the American, he made greater headway in General Talbott's acquaintanceship during their half-hour's talk than many Englishmen make in a month's companionship. Simultaneously Senator March asked permission to call, and General Talbott gave a cordial invitation to him to do so. Lord Baudesert was in high feather. The dinner had been pleasant and agreeable and he was pleased that General Talbott should see what admirable dinner guests Americans of the best sort made. Sir Percy Carlyon appeared to be in his usual form, but, as he sat smoking and talking pleasantly, the thought that Lucy Armytage and Alicia Vernon were at that moment in the same room, on the same terms, and reckoned to be of the same sort, gnawed him like some ravenous beast.
Mrs. Vernon at that very time was sitting on a sofa with Lucy Armytage, and with perfect art and tact was finding out from her many things which the girl was quite unconscious of betraying. Alicia Vernon was puzzled by the fact of a secret engagement, because Sir Percy had told her that the girl he loved had promised to marry him, and this was evidently unknown to the rest of the world. Without the least trouble, by asking a few half-laughing questions about the custom of engagements in America, Alicia Vernon discovered that such things as unannounced engagements existed and were not considered discreditable. Lucy answered readily, but in speaking her pale cheeks took on a colour like the faint pink of the azalea. Alicia led her on without questions, but with clever suggestions, to tell of her employments, of the books she read and many other things, which Lucy told frankly and without the slightest suspicion that she was being cross-examined, and was adding link by link to the chain of evidence which had begun with the mere probabilities of a guess.
Alicia Vernon's heart burned within her. She would like to have forgotten Sir Percy Carlyon long ago, as she had forgotten many others. She knew that her feeling for him was an infatuation, but in some strange manner he had dominated her imagination from the beginning. It was the most dangerous, on account of General Talbott, of all the affairs in which she had ever been engaged; but all women like Alicia Vernon have one tragic love. The old Greek superstition that those who defy love are punished works out in a different civilisation with those who dishonour love, paying for it in blood and tears.
Alicia Vernon had said to Lucy: