"I am not an apparition," she reassured him; "but only a simple flesh-and-blood creature. Won't you put down your picture?" She smiled again at his embarrassment.
He laughed, and stood the sketch on a chair.
"Your presence certainly startled me," he confessed. "I had an idea you were thousands of miles away." They took hands—a good, comrade-like clasp. "Fortunately the idea was erroneous."
"Fortunately," she echoed, laughingly capping his gallantry.
"Oh, but how stupid I am! Forgive me!" He almost swept the hat from his head. "You see how I was scared; how ill prepared to cope with apparitions."
She laughed again. "You are to keep your hat on," she commanded. "My presence is easily accounted for; out of sheer restlessness of spirit I thought I should like to try London again—I had shunned it like the plague for ever so long. As all the nice little hotels were full, I descended on my father here, and practically appropriated this room."
"I fear I'm an intruder," he stammered.
"You had my permission; it was obtained in due form. Only I insisted my name was to be held back. I wanted to play the apparition, and my father entered into the whim of the thing. It seems like old times again."
Wyndham tried to transport himself back along the years. "I wonder whether there's anything better in life than to repeat the best moments of the past," he said pensively; "that is, if we can catch them with all the original magic in them." He saw her head drop a little; her expression was full of musing, half-sad and tender. Then he remembered that things had indeed changed since those old days, that Lady Betty had a husband! It was strange, but the apparition, besides the rest of the mischief, had momentarily driven the fact from the store of his knowledge. He had had absolutely the delusion that this was the brilliant Lady Betty, still unwed, to whom no suitor might aspire save with yachts and palaces.
"I have been calling you Lady Betty!" he exclaimed. "The delusion of old times was very strong."