She had smiled mystically.
“He will never have the least suspicion I am not Aimée,” she had said. In her heart she said: “There is no love to penetrate the disguise.”
She saw Philip nearly every day as he took his favorite stroll across the fields, passing the hedge of the White House garden.
Philip looked well and contented. He was, indeed, at this time, mightily pleased with his work, and that put him in excellent spirits.
The letter he had received from Thomas Alvin pleased him too, and being in such excellent humor, he generously made allowances for the rudeness of Mr. Alvin on the occasion of his visit, and answered the note in his own charming manner.
He had, however, no present intention of repeating the call he had made at the White House. The rough Colonial did not appeal to him, and Miss Le Breton, being restored to a normal condition, was not in need of kindnesses, which, moreover, might be mistaken. Philip considered himself very clever to have thought of this.
It was, of course, possible now that Miss Le Breton and the young man should meet, but Philip meant to avoid it if he could. He did not want to have the old sorrow awakened by her looks and her voice. Her voice, when he chanced to hear it from the garden, affected him more than her extraordinary likeness to Eweretta. Both girls had low-pitched, contralto voices, singularly sweet.
Philip had no desire to be haunted by ghosts.
Since coming to the bungalow he had communed much with himself, and one result of his communings had been the abandonment of his resolve to die a bachelor.
He had no notion of again falling in love. He had, he told himself, experienced one grand passion. He could never experience another. But he would marry, if he got on, a woman who had society tact and experience, a woman who could make his position by her savoir faire. He had come to realize that however big an author a man might be, a society wife was an essential to a big success. She could make him the fashion. His work was everything to him now, and he honestly believed that no living author wrote quite such perfect romances as he did.