Instinctively she put out her hand to gather in flying threads of hair, she felt at the pearl fastening of her collar, she looked at her brown shoes and her dress, and was satisfied. She was spotless. And never had her face shone—really shone—to such advantage. It had not now the brilliant colours of the first years. The climate, her work in hospital building, her labours against slavery, had touched her with a little whiteness. She was none the less good to see.
Who was this striding along with Donovan Pasha, straight towards her house? No one she had ever seen in Egypt, and yet in manner like some one she had seen before—a long time before. Her mind flashed back through the years to the time when she was a girl, and visited old friends of her father in a castle looking towards Skaw Fell, above the long valley of the Nidd. A kind of mist came before her eyes now.
When she really saw again, they were at the steps of the veranda, and Donovan Pasha's voice was greeting her. Then, as, without a word but with a welcoming smile, she shook hands with Dicky, her look was held, first by a blank arrest of memory, then by surprise.
Dicky turned for his office of introduction but was stayed by the look of amusement in his friend's face, and by the amazed recognition in that of My Lady. He stepped back with an exclamation, partly of chagrin. He saw that this recognition was no coincidence, so far as the man was concerned, though the woman had been surprised in a double sense. He resented the fact that Kingsley Bey had kept this from him—he had the weakness of small-statured men and of diplomatic people who have reputations for knowing and doing. The man, all smiling, held out his hand, and his look was quizzically humorous as he said:
"You scarcely looked to see me here, Lady May?" Her voice trembled with pleasure. "No, of course. When did you come, Lord Selden? . . . Won't you sit down?"
That high green terrace of Cumberland, the mist on Skaw Fell, the sun out over the sea, they were in her eyes. So much water had gone under the bridges since!
"I was such a young girl then—in short frocks—it was a long time ago, I fear," she added, as if in continuation of the thought flashing through her mind. "Let me see," she went on fearlessly; "I am thirty; that was thirteen years ago."
"I am thirty-seven, and still it is thirteen years ago."
"You look older, when you don't smile," she added, and glanced at his grey hair.
He laughed now. She was far, far franker than she was those many years ago, and it was very agreeable and refreshing. "Donovan, there, reproved me last night for frivolity," he said.