Next morning, about eleven o’clock, Sylvia and Geoffrey went out for a walk together on the high road which leads into the quiet little town of Oundle. Sylvia in a thick grey coat and a canary-coloured scarf, and carrying a stiff ash stick, went along with true golfing stride.
Strangely enough, she was the first to mention the girl Farncombe.
“I can’t fathom May at all,” she said. “To me she’s a mystery.”
“Why?” asked her lover, pretending ignorance.
“I don’t know, but she knows so little of you—and yet she knows so much!”
“How?”
“Well—her knowledge of wireless last night was extraordinary. She seems to know things that are entirely confidential. How? I don’t like such people, Geoff. They’re a bit uncanny!”
“Yes,” he laughed. “She’s somewhat of a mystery. But when one goes to a house-party one is sure to meet people who are mysterious. Yet they may be, after all, the most ordinary persons. It is one’s own point of view that often creates mystery. That’s my opinion.”
With that Sylvia agreed. Yet, of course, her lover had become more than ever puzzled over their fellow-guest, and was glad when Sylvia let the subject drop.
Sylvia and he were lovers, it was true, but he was so plain, straightforward, and honest, that he could not bring himself to reveal to the girl he loved the facts which had come within his knowledge.