She flushed a little at the thrust but maintained otherwise her smiling calm.
“But when did you meet her, Mr. Holt—did you ever tell me?” she asked, with a delightful assumption of candour and innocence.
There was never a cleverer actress on or off the stage than Kitty Clevedon.
“Oh, she flitted into my life through my study window—and then flitted out again—into the darkness—”
“Leaving you desolate—how very unkind of her!”
She broke off with a quick trill of pretty laughter that was not at all affected and in which I joined her.
“It sounded a trifle sentimental, didn’t it?” I said, and then added with tranquil insolence, looking her this time full in the face, “but isn’t there a proverb about better to have seen and lost than never to have—oh, and that reminds me. I asked Dr. Crawford where I should find another young lady like Miss Clevedon and he replied, ‘Impossible—there isn’t one. God broke the mould when He made her.’ But there is another one, I know, because I have seen her, and—”
“I should want a very solemn affidavit indeed to make me believe that Dr. Crawford ever said anything so pretty as that,” she interrupted.
I had expected to make her angry but she seemed only amused.
“Oh, you don’t know the doctor,” I said airily. “He is capable of much. But he was wrong in this case—the double exists.”