"Please to keep on with the Lady Betty—I come back to it so easily. It quite pleased me when it slipped from your lips. You have stepped out of the long ago; I step back to meet you. You must still think of me as Lady Betty."
"And Lord Lakeden?" he murmured, though he felt the inquiry was rather a belated courtesy.
She stared at him, her cheeks white, her eyes growing unnaturally large.
"Your husband—I hope he is well," he explained, bewildered by this new expression that seemed to hold mingled amazement and horror.
"My husband!" She laughed—a weird peal that filled him with a fear as of blinding flashes to come. "Did you not know? I thought the whole world knew. I have no husband!"
He looked at her. "I don't understand," he stammered.
"I really believe you don't," she said, her face still blanched. "My married life was a short one. Lord Lakeden met with an accident on the Alps—the summer before last. He went out without a guide. The details were in all the papers. It was one of the sensations of the silly season." Again a nervous laugh, but more than ever it was full of unnatural echoes.
Instinctively Wyndham took off his hat again, and stood with his head bowed. "I am sorry. My condolences are late, but they are sincere."
"I somehow expected you would write to me at the time. Hosts and hosts wrote to me—till my head went dizzy; but never a word from you." She was speaking with greater command of herself now, but he felt in her words a world of reproach.
"I was living as a hermit at the time. I saw nobody for—shall I say it seemed to me a lifetime—save the poor old woman who came to turn out my studio once in every three months perhaps."