“Dan Storran?” Davilof’s glance flashed over her face, searching, questioning.
“The owner of the place. He’s been teaching me to ride,” she added inconsequently.
“Who is he?”—with swift jealousy. “The little fair-haired lady’s brother?”
“No, her husband. I said Mrs. Storran.”
Davilof’s interest waned suddenly.
“Did you?”—indifferently. “I didn’t notice. She’s a pretty little person.”
Magda agreed absently. A fresh difficulty had occurred to her; Davilof might chance to give away to the Storrans the secret of her identity.
“Oh, by the way,” she said hurriedly. “They don’t know me here as Magda Wielitzska. I’m plain Miss Vallincourt to them—enjoying the privileges of being a nobody! You’ll be sure to remember, won’t you?” He nodded, and she pursued more lightly: “And now, as you insist on having your tea here, you might begin to earn it by telling me the latest London gossip. We hear nothing at all down here. We don’t even get a London newspaper.
“I don’t think there is much news. There never is at this time of the year. Everybody’s out of town.”
He vouchsafed one or two items concerning mutual friends—an engagement here, a forthcoming divorce there. So-and-so was in Italy and Mrs. Somebody Else was said to have eloped with a well-known actor-manager to America—all the odds and ends of gossip that runs like wildfire over the social prairie.