“Anything in it about the beautiful ‘Madonna?’”
“A good deal.”
“Ah! I thought so. It seems to me that Dan has lost his head over that young woman. Who is she?”
Philip looked up from the tea-cup he had started to fill, the dainty silver pot poised in his hand.
“That is it!—Who is she?” he said with a queer smile. “I can tell you who she is said to be.”
Browne eyed his friend a trifle anxiously, and cast a hasty glance round to see if any of the other occupants of tea-tables were noticing.
Philip lowered his voice when he next spoke.
“I stayed for a night at the White House recently—the White House is near my bungalow, and where Dan’s ‘Madonna’ lives with her mother and her uncle. I had a queer experience there, queer enough to make a man believe in the supernatural—or (and this is the only alternative) that his reason is losing balance.”
Browne was now all eager attention. He was tremendously interested in psychical matters.
“You know, Browne, that I was engaged to marry a lovely Canadian girl?”