“Curious!” he ejaculated—“I used to know a girl named Diana May years ago—before—before I was married. Not like this girl—no!—though she was pretty. I wonder if she’s any relation? I must ask her.”
“She seemed to know your name when she saw it in our register,” said the manageress, “for she inquired if you and your family were staying here. I said ‘Yes’—and ‘did she know Mrs. Cleeve?’—but she replied that she did not.”
Captain the Honourable had become absent-minded, and murmured “Oh!” and “Ah!” as if he were not paying very much attention. He strolled away and out into the street, with the name “Diana May” ringing in his ears, and the vision of that exquisitely lovely girl before his eyes. A dull spark of resentment sprang up in him that he should be a married man with a wife too stout to tie her own shoes, and the father of children too plain-featured and ungraceful to be looked at a second time.
“We are fools to marry at all!” he inwardly soliloquized. “At fifty-five a man may still be a lover—and lover of a girl, too—when long before that age a woman is done for!”
Meanwhile Diana was having adventures of a sufficiently amusing kind, had she retained the capability of being amused by anything “merely” human. She arrived at her former old home a little on the outskirts of Richmond, and bade the driver of her automobile wait at the carriage gate, preferring to walk up the short distance of the drive to the house. How familiar and yet unfamiliar that wide sweep of neatly-rolled gravel was! banked up on each side with rhododendrons, through which came occasional glimpses of smooth green lawn and beds of summer flowers! How often she had weeded and watered those beds, when the gardener went off on a “booze,” as had been his frequent custom, pretending he had been “called away” by the illness of a near relative! Pausing on the doorstep of the house she looked around her,—everything was as it used to be,—the whole place expressing that unctuous pride and neatness ordinary to the suburban villa adorned by suburban taste. She rang the bell, and a smart parlour-maid appeared,—not one of the old “staff” which had been under Diana’s management.
“Is Mrs. Polydore May in?” she asked.
The maid perked a saucy head. The dazzling beauty of the visitor offended her—she had claims to a kind of music-hall prettiness herself.
“Mrs. May is in, but she’s resting and doesn’t wish to be disturbed,” she replied—“Unless you’ve some pertikler appointment——”
“My business is very urgent,” said Diana, calmly. “I am a relative of hers, just returned from abroad. I must see her—or Mr. May——”
“Perhaps Miss Preston——” suggested the parlour-maid.