I think even Preston was taken abackand it took a great deal to astonish Preston. Osborne, I could see, was dumbfounded. Jasmine Gastrell was the first to speak, and she addressed me without looking either at Osborne or Preston.
"Good evening, Mr. Berrington," she said, with one of those wonderful smiles of hers which seemed entirely to transform her expression; "this is an unexpected pleasure."
How strangely different she now looked from the way she had looked at me in Cumberland Place when, disguised as Sir Aubrey Belston, I had pretended to read her past life! She turned to Jack, and, raising her eye-brows as though she had only that instant recognized him, "Why," she exclaimed, "it's Mr. Osborne! I had no idea we were to have the pleasure of seeing you here to-nighthad you, Dulcie?"
Dulcie, who was standing by quite unconcernedly, turned at once to me without answering Mrs. Gastrell's question.
"Dear old Mike," she said, "how delightful of you to have come. I do hope you have entirely recovered. You looked so ill when you saw me off at Paddington this morning that I felt anxious about you all the way home. What was the matter with you? Have you any idea?"
I was so staggered, first at finding her at this house again, and then at her addressing me in the calm way she did, that for some moments I could not answer. Jack and Preston, now in conversation with Jasmine Gastrell, did not notice my hesitation. At last, collecting my scattered thoughts, I answered:
"I am quite well, Dulcie. There was nothing really much amiss with me this morningI thought you knew that."
I stopped abruptly. What else could I say?
Under the circumstances I could not well speak about the telegram, and say why we had arrived in this way at such an unusual hour.
"I suppose you have come about Dick," she went on suddenly. "He is asleep nowhe was so tired, poor little chap."