“What trickery is a woman’s work?” she asked, glancing inquiringly at me.
“Nothing, my dear,” His Excellency hastened to reply, placing his thin hand tenderly upon her shoulder—“nothing, at least, that concerns you.”
“But you are not well!” she cried in alarm. Then, turning to me, said: “Look, Mr Ingram, how pale he is!”
“Your father is rather overburdened by important business,” I replied.
Her face assumed a puzzled expression. Sibyl, the pretty, dark-haired daughter of Lord Barmouth, was acknowledged on all sides to be more than usually beautiful, and was the pet of diplomatic Paris. With her mother she went everywhere in that dazzling vortex of gaiety, in which the diplomatist accredited to France is bound to move. Ah! that glare and glitter, that constant whirl, that never-ceasing music! How weary I was of it all, and how it jarred upon me!
And why? Well, to speak the truth, I myself had an affair of the heart, and my thoughts were always far from those brilliant spectacles in which I was merely an official in a braided uniform.
“What has occurred, Mr Ingram?” asked the Ambassador’s daughter anxiously. “Father is certainly not himself to-night.”
“Another political complication,” I responded; “that is all.”
“Sibyl, my dear,” exclaimed her father, gently taking her hand, “you know that I forbid any inquiries to be made into matters which must be secret, even from you.”
