At home there’d be Cicely. I’m fond of her, but I dread this. She takes such an exasperating interest in anything that can be called a love-affair. I myself can’t see what there is so thrilling about “Who is going to marry whom, and why?”

But Cicely positively “collects,” just as some people collect book-plates, all she can find out on this hackneyed subject. I know she’ll insist on treating this arrangement between my employer and myself as a real, romantic “affaire de cœur.” Well, I suppose I shall have to keep from slapping her!

Then there’ll be Mr. Waters’ friends, whoever they are, to whom I shall have to be introduced as the girl he’s going to marry. (Oh, lor’! as Mrs. Skinner puts it.)

“After which,” pursued the Governor, “I think I shall have to ask you to——What is it, Miss Trant? Just seen somebody you know?”

“Yes,” I managed to murmur; “I know the lady who has just come in—at the next table.”

For at the table which had been reserved for three, two of the party had just turned up.

One was a fair-haired young girl, expensively frocked in blue velvet, but still looking like school-room tea. The other—how well I knew[53] the slim, well-preserved silhouette of her figure, the carefully-graded bloom of her face!

[53]

It was Lady Vandeleur, whom I’d imagined to be in Japan!

She is a charming woman, but she has two faults. One is that, with a son of thirty-two, she insists on remaining twenty-five. The other is that, unlike dear old Sydney, to whom the downfall of the Trant fortunes made absolutely no difference, she’s never really liked me since the “smash.”

Before that, she was quite eager to explain that I was “already” like a young daughter to her. But it’s two years since I heard the tone of effusive affection with which Sydney’s mother was speaking to the girl beside her.

“My dear child, aren’t you starving? I vote we begin. That naughty boy of mine is so late. We really can’t wait for Sydney!”

“For Sydney!” Goodness! Then presently Sydney himself would join them. He would take the chair that faced our table—to which his mother sat with her back turned. He would see me—he’d be sure to come across and speak!

My mind was in a 

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