“I don’t know,” I said, hopelessly embarrassed. “It—it just struck me that this might be Banks.”
He had come nearer to us now, near enough for Miss Tattersall to recognise him; and her amazement was certainly greater than mine.
“But you’re right,” she said with a little catch in her breath. “It is Banks, out of uniform.”
For a moment I hoped that her surprise might cover my slip, but she was much too acute to pass such a palpable blunder as that.
“It is,” she repeated; “but how did you know? I thought you had never seen him.”
“Just an intuition,” I prevaricated and tried, I knew at the time how uselessly, to boast a pride in my powers of insight.
The effect upon my companion was neither that I hoped to produce, nor that I more confidently expected. Instead of chaffing me, pressing me for an explanation of the double game I had presumably been playing, she looked at me with doubt and an obvious loss of confidence. Just so, I thought, she might have looked at me if I had tried to take some unfair advantage of her.
“Well, I suppose it’s time to get ready for church,” she remarked coldly. “Are you coming?”
I forget what I replied. She was already slipping into the background of my interest. I was so extraordinarily intrigued by the sight of Arthur Banks, the chauffeur, boldly ringing at the front door of Jervaise Hall.