“This is the first time, Dick, we’ve had secrets from each other,” I observed gravely.
“No,” he answered. “You love the mysterious Eva, and have never told me so. That’s a secret, isn’t it?”
I was surprised that he had detected my love for her, and rather alarmed, because if he had noticed it others had doubtless remarked it also. Therefore I questioned him, but he only laughed, saying—
“Why, anybody who saw you together down at Riverdene couldn’t fail to guess the truth. People have sharp eyes, you know.”
I was silent. If this were actually true, then I feared that I had made a hopeless fool of myself, besides wrecking any chance of eliciting those facts which I had set my mind upon revealing at any hazard.
Presently he rose, crossing to his writing-table to scribble a letter, while I, lighting a cigarette, sat silent, still thinking seriously upon the words he had just uttered.
Through the veil of tobacco smoke I seemed to see that fair, smiling face gazing at me, ever the same open countenance, the same clear eyes of childlike blue, the same half-parted mouth that I had first seen on that fatal night in Phillimore Place. In my dream I thought that she beckoned me to her, that she invited me to speak with her, and saw in her eyes a calm, sweet expression—the expression of true womanly love. It was but the chimera of an instant, a vision produced by my wildly-disordered brain, yet so vivid it seemed that when it faded I glanced across to my companion’s bent figure, half fearing that he, too, had witnessed it.
There are times when our imagination plays us such tricks—times when the constant concentration of the mind reaches its climax and is reflected down the aimless vista of our vision, causing us to see the person upon whom our thoughts are centred. Such a moment was this. It aroused within me an instant and intense longing to walk again at her side, to speak to her, to hear her sweet, well-modulated voice—nay, to tell her the deepest secret of my heart.
Thus it was that without invitation, or without previous introduction to Lady Glaslyn, I called at the Hollies on the following afternoon. A neat maid showed me into a cosy, rather small sitting-room, and for a few moments I remained there in expectancy. Although the house was not a large one it bore no stamp of the nouveau riche. It was exceedingly well-furnished, and surrounded by spacious grounds, wherein were a number of old yews and beeches. Old-fashioned, queer in its bygone taste, it had stood there on the broad highway from historic Hampton to London for probably a century and a half, being built in the days when the villadom of Fulwell had not yet arisen, and Twickenham was still a quiet village with its historic ferry, and where the stage-coaches changed horses at that low-built old hostelry, the King’s Head. The place stood back from the dusty-high road, half-hidden from the curious gaze, yet, surrounded as it now was by smaller houses, some of them mere cottages, while a few cheap shops had also sprung up in the vicinity, the place was not really a desirable place of abode. The district had apparently sadly degenerated, like all places in the immediate vicinity of the Metropolis.
Before long the door opened, and Eva, looking cool and sweet in a washing dress of white drill, and wearing a straw hat with black band, entered and greeted me cordially.