Chapter Seventeen.
Mr Muirhead and Hilda Discover Raife’s Identity.
When Raife had returned to his room after the pleasantest evening of his life, he meditated, as is the wont of impulsive young men after an event. The night was very hot and, in spite of the clear starlit sky overhead, it was sultry. He donned a light cashmere dressing-gown and walked out to the balcony which overlooked the old town. Seating himself in a wicker chair, he lit a cigar and talked to himself, a practice of elderly people and those who are mentally perturbed. He talked to himself softly, in short, disjointed sentences. He muttered, with a curl of his lips: “Gilda! Ha! ha! That was a passing fancy. I was a fool. I’m glad I got out of it as well as I did. It was good of that fellow, Herrion, to steer me out of the mess I was landing myself into. Fancy marrying a ‘lady’ burglar.”
He yawned and relit his cigar which had gone out. Cigars make no allowance for meditative monologues. Continuing, he raised his voice slightly: “Woman-hater! Of course, I’m a woman-hater. Two women have landed me in a hole.” Starting from his reverie, he thought he heard a cough. Yes, it was a woman’s cough. He stood up and leant over the balcony. As he looked down, he saw a woman with a light shawl over her head. She was on the balcony immediately under his. He only caught a glance as the figure entered the window below, which corresponded with the one that led to his own room. He whispered now, lest he should be overheard: “I wonder who that woman was. Was it Miss Muirhead?—Hilda! I rather like the name. It rhymes with Gilda. But what a different type of girl. And, after all, I must have companionship of some sort.”
Next morning the trio met again in the foyer. The ice was broken now. Hotel friendships are very warm whilst they last. Would this one last?
When Raife left, after his story of the wound he got on behalf of a strange woman in Khartoum, Mr Muirhead and Hilda, each holding the card in their hands, the card that Raife had given them, looked at one another with puzzled expressions. Then Mr Muirhead read aloud: “Sir Raife Remington, Bart., Aldborough Park, Tunbridge Wells.”
Hilda asked: “Why didn’t he tell us he was a baronet?”
Her father answered, reflectively: “Yes, these Englishmen certainly are curious. Now, if he’d been an American judge, or colonel, we should have known all about it in five minutes, and more than we wanted to know before the day was out, and before the dinner was over, we should have hated him for it.”