“Yes,” said my friend. “He was here quite an unconscionable time—even for an old school chum of the proprietor. I hope you counted the spoons when he left!”
Lorian’s disrespectful references to Sir Julius, his father, were characteristic; for he reverences that famous artist with the double love of a son and a pupil.
“Of course we did,” chuckled Reynor. “Nothing missing, my boy!”
“That’s funny,” drawled Lorian. “Because if he didn’t steal it from here I can’t imagine from where he stole it!”
“Stole what, Harry?”
“Whatever some chap broke into his studio for last night!”
“Eh!” cried the Colonel, sitting suddenly very upright. “Into your father’s studio? Burglars?”
“Suppose so,” was the reply. “They took nothing that I was aware to be in his possession, though the place was ransacked. I naturally concluded that they had taken something that I was unaware to be in his——Ah!”
Sybil Reynor entered by the door which, for the past twenty minutes, had been the focus of Lorian’s gaze. The gathering dusk precluded the possibility of my seeing with certainty, but I think her face flushed as her dark eyes rested upon my friend. Her beauty is not of the kind which needs deceptive half-lights to perfect it, but there in the dimness, as she came towards us, she looked very lovely and divinely graceful. I did not envy Lorian his good fortune; but I suppressed a sigh when I saw how my existence had escaped the girl’s notice and how the world in her eyes, contained only a Henry Lorian, R.I.