“But he doesn’t know you,” cried the girl.
“No—at least—er—we’ll leave it at that. And I would be obliged, Miss Daventry, in case you happen to be speaking to him, if you would refrain from mentioning the fact that I know him.” He stared at her gravely.
“You’re very mysterious, Mr. Longworth,” said the girl, with an attempt at lightness.
“And if I may I will prolong my visit until our friend departs,” continued Longworth.
“Why, of course,” she said, bending over the tea-tray. “You weren’t thinking of going—going yet, were you?”
“I was thinking after lunch that I should have to go to-morrow,” he said, putting down his tea-cup.
“But why so soon?” she asked, and her voice was low. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“In the course of a life that has taken me into every corner of the globe,” he answered, slowly, “I have never dreamed that I could be so utterly and perfectly happy as I have been here. It has opened my mind to a vista of the Things that Might Be—if the Things that Had Been were different. But as you grow older, Sybil, you will learn one bitter truth: no human being can ever be exactly what he seems. Masks? just masks! And underneath—God and that being alone know.”
He rose abruptly, and she watched him bending over Lady Granton with his habitual lazy grace. The indolent smile was round his lips—the irrepressible twinkle was in his eyes. But for the first time he had called her Sybil; for the first time—she knew. The vague forebodings conjured up by his words were swamped by that one outstanding fact; she knew. And nothing else mattered.