"Miss de Rosen," he said, with a courteous bow, "may I have the pleasure of introducing a friend of mine—Mr. Stuart Northcote." Then, turning with a smile to the judge, he added lightly, "Ah, Beauchamp, you're the very man I want to see. Can you spare him a moment, Miss de Rosen? I'll leave Northcote to entertain you."
The thing was done so smoothly and with such delightful dexterity that, almost before I realised it, I was left alone with Mercia, and Lammersfield was strolling off, with his hand on the shoulder of an exceedingly annoyed-looking judge.
"If I am ever tried for my life," I said, with a smile, "I hope Beauchamp won't be on the Bench." Then, without waiting for a reply, I added abruptly, "I want to talk to you. Can we get out of this and find a couple of seats somewhere?"
She accepted my arm, and the mere touch of her hand upon my sleeve filled me with a ridiculous sense of happiness. We made our way through the crowded ballroom and down the broad staircase into the hall below, where desultory carriage-loads of late-comers were still arriving. To the right of the hall was a conservatory—a wonderful fairyland of azaleas and other flowering shrubs; and in the far corner, under the shelter of a couple of giant palms, I found two comfortable and fairly secluded chairs.
Mercia had seemed very charming to me the other night, but here, in the softly shaded light which gleamed upon her bare shoulders and just revealed that strange look of sorrow and tragedy in her eyes, her beauty held me in a kind of enchanted silence.
"I have been wondering if I should ever see you again," I said at last, with a little sigh of satisfaction.
She looked up at me with a sudden flash of anger that was amazingly becoming.
"Aren't you satisfied yet?" she said bitterly. "You have made me hate and despise myself for the rest of my life. Do you suppose that I can ever see you without remembering that I have betrayed my father?"
"If you mean that you would have pleased your father by putting a bullet through my head," I returned, "I think you are misjudging him."
She leant forward, her hand resting on the arm of the chair and her dark eyes fixed almost piteously on mine. "I wish I understood," she said. "Somehow, I can't believe that you are lying to me, and yet—"