"With Byng?" repeats Cecilia, too genuinely astonished to remember even to prefix a "Mr." to Byng's name. "Why, I should have thought that if there were one day of his life on which he could have done without you better than another, it would have been to-day!"
"Were not you rather de trop?" chimes in Sybilla's languid voice from the sofa. "Rather a bad third?"
"I was not a third at all."
"Do you mean to say," cries Cecilia, her countenance tinged with the pink of a generous indignation, "that you were four—that Mrs. Le Marchant stayed in the room the whole time? I must say that now that they are really and bonâ fide engaged, I think she might leave them alone together."
"Mrs. Le Marchant was not there at all." Then, seeing the open-mouthed astonishment depicted on the faces of his audience, he braces his mind to make the inevitable yet dreaded announcement. "I had better explain at once that neither Mrs. nor Miss Le Marchant was there; they are gone."
"Gone!"
"Yes; they left Florence at seven o'clock this morning." There is a moment of silent stupefaction.
"I suppose," says Cecilia, at last slowly recovering the power of speech, "that they were telegraphed for? Mr. Le Marchant is dead or ill? one of the married sisters? one of the brothers?"
Never in his life has Jim laboured under so severe a temptation to tell a lie, were it only the modified falsehood of allowing Cecilia's hypothesis to pass uncontradicted; but even if he were able for once to conquer his constitutional incapacity, he knows that in this case it would be useless. The truth must transpire to-morrow.
"I believe not."