CHAPTER IX. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST.
“Le plus sur moyen d'arriver à son but c'est de ne pas faire
de rencontres en chemin.”
“Yes, it was long ago—'lang, lang izt's her'—you remember the song Frau Neumayer always sang. So long ago, Mr. Cornish, that——Well, it must be Mr. Cornish, and not Tony.”
Mrs. Vansittart leant back in her comfortable chair and looked at her visitor with observant eyes. Those who see the most are they who never appear to be observing. It is fatal to have others say that one is so sharp, and people said as much of Mrs. Vansittart, who had quick dark eyes and an alert manner.
“Yes,” answered Cornish, “it is long ago, but not so long as all that.”
His smooth fair face was slightly troubled by the knowledge that the recollections to which she referred were those of the Weimar days when she who was now a widow had been a young married woman. Tony Cornish had also been young in those days, and impressionable. It was before the world had polished his surface bright and hard. And the impression left of the Mrs. Vansittart of Weimar was that she was one of the rare women who marry pour le bon motif. He had met her by accident in the streets of The Hague a few hours ago, and having learnt her address, had, in duty bound, called at the house at the corner of Park Straat and Oranje Straat at the earliest calling hour.
“I am not ignorant of your history since you were at Weimar,” said the lady, looking at him with an air of almost maternal scrutiny.
“I have no history,” he replied. “I never had a past even, a few years ago, when every man who took himself seriously had at least one.”
He spoke as he had learnt to speak, with the surface of his mind—with the object of passing the time and avoiding topics that might possibly be painful. Many who appear to be egotistical must assuredly be credited with this good motive. One is, at all events, safe in talking of one's self. Sufficient for the social day is the effort to avoid glancing at the cupboard where our neighbour keeps his skeleton.