"Right you are," cried Pallister the lazy. "Come along, Jackie, my boy; we had better take plenty of time to strengthen ourselves for this afternoon. We have both got to make a good impression, you know."
Jack partly understood Geoff's evident anxiety to get them gone. He promptly pulled off his painting overall and put on his coat. Pallister, with no such change of costume to effect, was already awaiting him, and in a very few minutes they were both out of the place.
Already Geoff had freed Evarne from her golden fetters. They fastened by means of snaps, and it needed the use of both hands to open them. The long connecting chain was quite unbreakable, though charmingly light and delicate in workmanship. He occupied the time while his friends were dressing in subjecting it to a series of vigorous little tugs, as if to test its strength; but directly the studio door had closed, he cast it aside and turned to Evarne.
"Surely I didn't understand rightly?" she queried, in tones of ill-suppressed anxiety. "I thought Mr. Pallister seemed to say that Lord Winborough was not only your cousin, but that you were his heir?"
Geoff acknowledged this to be verily the truth.
"I'm sure I don't know why I didn't mention it long ago," he continued apologetically. "It's very silly of me to appear to have made any sort of a mystery about it, for naturally it's no secret. It can't be exactly termed a misfortune in itself, can it, while of course it does not make the slightest little bit of difference in our feelings for one another?"
"I am not so sure," rejoined Evarne sadly.
With slow steps she walked across the room and sat down by the open window, gazing out into vacancy with troubled eyes. She felt no pleasurable excitement, no eager interest, in this marvellous piece of news. On the contrary, the fact that her lover held a position of so much greater importance in the estimation of the world than she had for one moment suspected, appeared to her simply and solely as an unqualified misfortune. Viewed in the light of this new discovery, his marriage with a woman who was, after all, only an artist's model, and, moreover, one weighed down by a secret that a very few inquiries on the part of the curious might reveal, became a matter of entirely different import. Such ominous forebodings, such fresh doubts and apprehensions crowded upon her, that tears burned under her eyelids, while an expression of utter misery settled upon her features.
Geoffrey sped over to her side.
"My own dearest darling, please, please don't look so worried about it. I'm so sorry I didn't tell you at once, but left you to find out so suddenly. I was an idiot. If you look like that, I shall never forgive myself. Why does it make you unhappy? I should have thought you'd be rather pleased, if anything. What a sigh! After all, it's not so wonderfully important. It will not make the least bit of difference to us for years and years to come—perhaps never—who can tell?"