"I could have been engaged twice," says the other; "only one was forty-five, and the other was a Hungarian."
They do not interest the drawler. She ripples on musically: "Of cawce, I shall have Cerberus, because he belawngs to Jack. Oh, he is a dahling!" Then the two go out of hearing; but the drawl is there, in the distance still. Challis notes afar, under the cedar-trees, how Chinese lanterns are coming to birth in the twilight. There will only be real darkness quite late to-night.
Two other voices are audible near for a few seconds, with a roused interest for Challis, whose sense of eavesdropping increases. Before he can decide on stopping his ears, he has heard Sibyl say: "I have eased my conscience, and you can't blame me, whatever happens!" She is speaking as one who has the Universe on her shoulders. Judith's answer is lost, rather to his relief, all but the timbre of its resentment.
Here come the chits back! They don't matter. What's the story now?
"Oh, it was hawrible! If only it had been an awdinary eyeglass, with a string!"
"But then it would have had to be fished up, you know!"
"Of cawce it would. I didn't think of that. Perhaps it's just as well it wawse a lens.... No, it was quite easy how it happened, if you think!"
"But whatever did you do?"
"Of course, d'ya, we both pretended it had rolled on the floor, and kneeled down to look for it. But we both knew quite well where it was, and I could feel it cold all down my back. Oh, it was hawrible!" The speaker added thoughtfully after a pause: "I am so glad it's Jack now, and not Sholto. He did look such a fool, and such strong cigars!"
Challis was able, being a dramatist, to put an intelligible construction on this little dramatic experience of the young lady and her previous admirer. We need not probe into its obscurity, as its only interest in this story is that it reminded him of an incident of his own bygone youth—the disappearance of a pearl from a ring of his first wife's, and its resurrection from the inside of his own stocking after setting him limping, inexplicably, all the way home to his rooms from her mother's house. Oh, the ridiculous trifles of life!—nothing at the time, but all-powerful for sadness in the days to come.