General Carden was also looking at Mrs. Sheldon, whom, it may be remembered, he had seen on a previous occasion in the Park, a day now three or four weeks old. Anne noticed the direction of his glance.
“Do you know her?” she asked suddenly, then added as an afterthought, “She is a friend of mine.” Anne did not state that it was a friendship of only two years’ standing, and one which existed infinitely more on Mrs. Sheldon’s side than on her own.
“I once had the honour of knowing her fairly intimately,” replied General Carden. “We still exchange bows and civil speeches, but—well, I fancy I remind her of an episode she wishes to forget—a perfectly unimpeachable little episode as far as she was concerned, of course.”
Anne glanced at him sideways. There was almost a hard note in his voice, which had not escaped her. She saw his profile clean-cut against the dark panelling of the room. And then a sudden little light of illumination sprang [Pg 137]to her eyes. She had all at once discovered of whom it was he reminded her. There was in his fine old face a very distinct look of the vagabond Piper. It was one of those indefinable likenesses which nevertheless exist, at all events in the eyes of those who chance to see it. It was faint, elusive, and to the majority it probably would not be the least apparent, but Anne now knew that it was this which had puzzled her throughout the evening.
And with the discovery came a sudden mental picture of a man standing in the moonlight with a crimson rose against his lips. It was a picture that had presented itself many times to her mental vision during the last few days, and as many times had been dismissed. It was apt to make her heart beat a trifle faster, to make the warm colour surge faintly to her face. Being unable—or unwilling—to account for a certain picturesque, if too impetuous, impulse which had moved her that moonlight night, she wished to forget it. Yet it had a disturbing way of representing itself before her mind.
In banishing it now her thoughts turned into another trend, which was apt to absorb them [Pg 138]quite a good deal, the thought of that writer of letters and books—Robin Adair. Anne was perfectly aware that this unknown writer occupied a large amount of her mind; it swung and see-sawed between him and the vagabond Piper in a way that was almost uncomfortable and altogether unaccountable. She was not accustomed to have her thoughts encroached on in this way without her will being consulted, and she could not understand it, or she told herself that she could not understand it, and that possibly came to the same thing. At all events, she was undoubtedly in a slight puzzlement of mind. It is the only word to describe her vaguely perplexed state. As now Robin Adair had swung uppermost, his book presented itself to her as a subject of conversation.
She asked General Carden if he had read it. She fancied—it was probably pure fancy—that he started slightly. He glanced, too, at Mrs. Cresswell, who was only a few paces away and quite possibly within earshot.
“Ah, yes,” he replied indifferently. “Mrs. Cresswell recommended it to me—a fairly promising book, I thought.” He was adhering faithfully to the expression.
“Fairly promising!” Anne’s voice held a note akin to indignation. “I thought it delightful; clever, cultured, quite admirably written.”
General Carden experienced a sensation which might be described as a glow of satisfaction. “Isn’t that,” he said, “rather high praise?”