The girl paused for a few moments. There was profound silence.
“And that isn't all of it. Nobody presented him to me. I deliberately picked him up!”
Three persons were in the drawing-room. An old woman with high cheekbones, a bowed nose and a firm, thin-lipped mouth was the central figure. She sat very straight in her chair, her head up and her hands in her lap. An aged man, in the khaki uniform of a major of yeomanry, stood at a window looking out, his hands behind his back, his chin lifted as though he were endeavoring to see something far away over the English country—something beyond the little groups of Highland cattle and the great oak trees.
Beside the old woman, on a dark wood frame, there was a fire screen made of the pennant of a Highland regiment. Beyond her was a table with a glass top. Under this cover, in a sort of drawer lined with purple velvet, there were medals, trophies and decorations visible below the sheet of glass. And on the table, in a heavy metal frame, was the portrait of a young man in the uniform of a captain of Highland infantry.
The girl who had been speaking sat in a big armchair by this table. One knew instantly that she was an American. The liberty of manner, the independence of expression, could not be mistaken in a country of established forms. She had abundant brown hair skillfully arranged under a smart French hat. Her eyes were blue; not the blue of any painted color; it was the blue of remote spaces in the tropic sky.
The old woman spoke without looking at the girl.
“Then,” she said, “it's all quite as”—she hesitated for a word—“extraordinary as we have been led to believe.”
There was the slow accent of Southern blood in the girl's voice as she went on.
“Lady Mary,” she said, “it's all far more extraordinary than you have been led to believe—than any one could ever have led you to believe. I deliberately picked the man up. I waited for him outside the Savoy, and pretended to be uncertain about an address. He volunteered to take me in his motor and I went with him. I told him I was alone in London, at the Ritz. It was Blackwell's bank I pretended to be looking for. Then we had tea.”
The girl paused.