A sudden unhealthy pallor left his companion's face putty-coloured.
"I didn't catch your name," Peter was saying when Digby recovered his breath. "Mine's Carmichael. My sister is a Mrs. Clifford."
He slightly over-emphasized the unfamiliar title.
The eyes scrutinizing him narrowed.
"I have had the honour of painting Mrs. Clifford."
"By Jove! Then it was you——" Peter studied him afresh and stopped, faintly uneasy. This man must know Ferlie quite well. What on earth had made him suppose Cyprian his brother—or hers? Better not inquire, lest he should put his foot on some unexplained situation. He drifted into enthusiastic comment on the portrait and escaped to warn Colonel Maddock of the artist's identity. He had been prepared for an equivocal attitude from the narrow-minded, who might criticize Ferlie's staying with a friend of Cyprian's calibre. Odd of Cyprian to rush her off like that to Burma. The uncle part could be overdone. Aunt B. had said they were living in the wilds and seeing no one, so it had appeared not to matter. He had assumed them lost to both hemispheres till Ferlie should become stronger after her troubles and able to make some satisfactory arrangement with Clifford.
She should have confided in her mother, or her only brother long ago. Of course he saw that she could not be left to the care of a chap who, from Aunt B.'s hints, was little better than a maniac on one point, however sane he might be on all others. Like the Vane woman, he would probably end in a Home, unless—and Peter eagerly recalled certain experiments he had been requested to make in Ruth Levine's flat and on the efficacy of which he was now awaiting her final verdict. He was so "keen" on insanity and if his ideas consolidated into success there seemed no limit to his horizon.
His gaze into space grew abstracted and he dismissed Maur's inquiry with a shrug. People always took for granted that old Cyprian was some sort of a relation: this fellow had obviously noticed that Ferlie did not use the prefix "Uncle," and had assumed the rest.
Rum chap, Cyprian. A queer friend for her to have stuck to all these years. He really must hint to her, though, that she could not, in any country, pay an indefinite visit to a man friend, however elderly, without asking for the acidulated comments of catty women and coarse-minded men.
By the time he found the Colonel that gentleman had already been presented to Maur; who had made hay to some purpose; having decided to try another tack and assume Cyprian something different from a brother, this time.