Vestalia gazed into his eyes with wistful tenderness. “To the end of our days!” she murmured softly, wonderingly. Then she recalled the task still unfinished. “I took the name of Peaussier,” she forced herself to continue, “because it was a translation of my own name. I looked in the dictionary, and found that it was the French for Skinner.”
David lifted his brows. “You don’t mean——” he began, confusedly.
“Yes;” she forestalled his question. “The old gentleman at the Savoy is my father’s own brother. My father was Abram Skinner. He was not a lucky man, or, in his later years, a very nice man either. He was always poor, and toward the end he was in other troubles too. My home was a thing to shudder at the recollection of. I ran away from it after mother died, and he’s gone, too, now. I changed the name, to wash my hands of the whole miserable thing. And then to think of the wonderful chance—to stumble upon my own uncle, a man of fortune and education, and the kindest heart alive—is it not the most extraordinary thing that ever happened in this world?”
“Very possibly it might be regarded as extraordinary—out in the so-called world,” David assented, reflectively. “But it is just the thing that would be expected in fairyland. Yes, it seems, on the face of it, a beneficent occurrence. It is good for you to be seized and possessed of a rich uncle—from some points of view. But from others—a doubt suggests itself, Vestalia, whether your uncle is well-affected toward the fairies. Standard Oil does not lend itself without an effort to the fantastic. What if your uncle beckons you to come forth from fairyland?”
“And leave you behind—is that what you mean?” asked Vestalia, slowly. “That would depend—depend on how much you wanted me to stay.”
David put out his left hand to take hers, where it lay upon the cloth. With his right he drew out his watch. “The name Skinner,” he said, “is all right for the folk at the Savoy. It is not a suitable name for you. I sympathise fully with your impulse to abandon it. The expedient which you adopted was, no doubt, the best that offered itself at the moment, but I think I know a better. I must leave you now, and hurry into the City. This is Monday. Dear love, on Thursday I claim the whole day from you. We will breakfast here at eight—it is not too early, is it?—or say rather that at just eight I will come and find you on Westminster Bridge. The day must begin there, mustn’t it? And—strangely enough—Thursday is in a sort another birthday of mine.”
“And of mine too?” she asked, with a light in her eyes.