For the moment even Cynthia was forgotten in the sudden excitement of this meeting with old friends. Challoner rushed off to the stalls.
"I knew it must be you," Christine's mother said, as Jimmy dropped into an empty seat beside her. "Christine saw you first, but we knew you had not the faintest notion as to who we were, although you bowed so politely," she added laughing.
"I'm ashamed, positively ashamed," Jimmy admitted, blushing ingenuously. "But I am delighted—simply delighted to see you and Christine again—I suppose it is Christine," he submitted doubtfully.
The girl in the white frock smiled. "Yes, and I knew you at once," she said.
Challoner was conscious of a faint disappointment as he looked at her. She had been such a pretty kid. She had hardly fulfilled all the promise she had given of being an equally pretty woman, he thought critically, not realising that it was the vivid colouring of Cynthia Farrow that had for the moment at least spoilt him for paler beauty.
Christine was very pale and a little nervous-looking. Her eyes—such beautiful brown eyes they were—showed darkly against her fair skin. Her hair was brown, too, dead brown, very straight and soft.
"By Jove! it's ripping to see you again after all this time," Jimmy Challoner broke out again eagerly. He looked at the mother rather than the daughter, for though he and Christine had been sweethearts for a little while in her pinafore days, Jimmy Challoner had adored Mrs. Wyatt right up to the time when, in his first Eton coat, he had said good-bye to her to go to school and walked right out of their lives.
"And what are you doing now, Jimmy?" Mrs. Wyatt asked him. "I suppose
I may still call you Jimmy?" she said playfully.
"Rather! please do! I'm not doing anything, as a matter of fact," Challoner explained rather vaguely. "I've got rooms in the Temple, and the great Horatio sends me a quarterly allowance, and expects me not to live beyond it." He made a little grimace. "You remember my brother Horace, of course!"
"Of course I do! Is he still abroad?"