“Good God!”

Reggie loosened his collar, and pulled himself together.

“Would you mind taking a glass of lemonade to the lady in blue sitting on the settee over there by the statue,” he said carefully.

He brightened up a little.

“Pretty good that! Not absolutely a test sentence, perhaps, like ‘Truly rural’ or ‘The intricacies of the British Constitution’. But nevertheless no mean feat.”

“I say!” he continued, after a pause.

“Sir?”

“You haven’t ever seen me before by any chance, if you know what I mean, have you?”

“No, sir.”

“You haven’t a brother, or anything of that shape or order, have you, no?”

“No, sir. I have often wished I had. I ought to have spoken to father about it. Father could never deny me anything.”

Reggie blinked. His misgiving returned. Either his ears, like his eyes, were playing him tricks, or else this waiter-chappie was talking pure drivel.

“What’s that?”

“Sir?”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘No, sir, I have no brother’.”

“Didn’t you say something else?”

“No, sir.”

“What?”

“No, sir.”

Reggie’s worst suspicions were confirmed.

“Good God!” he muttered. “Then I am!” Miss Faraday, when he joined her on the settee, wanted an explanation.

“What were you talking to that man about, Mr. Byng? You seemed to be having a very interesting conversation.”

“I was asking him if he had a brother.”

Miss Faraday glanced quickly at him. She had had a feeling for some time during the evening that his manner had been strange.

“A brother? What made you ask him that?”

“He—I mean—that is to say—what I mean is, he looked the sort of chap who might have a brother. Lots of those fellows have!”

Alice Faraday’s face took on a motherly look. She was fonder of Reggie than that love-sick youth supposed, and by sheer accident he had stumbled on the right road to her consideration. Alice Faraday was one of those girls whose dream it is to be a ministering angel to some chosen man, to be a good influence to him and raise him to an appreciation of nobler things. Hitherto, Reggie’s personality had seemed to her agreeable, but negative. A positive vice like over-indulgence in alcohol altered him completely. It gave him a significance.

“I told him to get you a lemonade,” said Reggie. “He seems to be taking his time about it. Hi!”

George approached deferentially.

“Sir?”

“Where’s that lemonade?”

“Lemonade, sir?”

“Didn’t I ask you to bring this lady a glass of lemonade?”

“I did not understand you to do so, sir.”

“But, Great Scott! What were we chatting about, then?”

“You were telling me a diverting story about an Irishman who landed in New York looking for work, sir. You would like a glass of lemonade, sir? Very good, sir.”

Alice placed a hand gently on Reggie’s arm.

“Don’t you think you had better lie down for a little and rest, Mr. Byng? I’m sure it would do you good.”

The solicitous note in her voice made Reggie quiver like a jelly. He had never known her speak like that before. For a moment he was inclined to lay bare his soul; but his nerve was broken. He did not want her to mistake the outpouring of a strong man’s heart for the irresponsible ravings of a too hearty diner. It was one of Life’s ironies. Here he was for the first time all keyed up to go right ahead, and he couldn’t do it.

“It’s the heat of the room,” said Alice. “Shall we go and sit outside on the terrace? Never mind about the lemonade. I’m not really thirsty.”

Reggie followed her like a lamb. The prospect of the cool night air was grateful.

“That,” murmured George, as he watched them depart, “ought to hold you for a while!”

He perceived Albert hastening towards him.

Chapter 13

Albert was in a hurry. He skimmed over the carpet like a water-beetle.

“Quick!” he said.

He cast a glance at the maid, George’s co-worker. She was reading a novelette with her back turned.

“Tell ‘er you’ll be back in five minutes,” said Albert, jerking a thumb.

“Unnecessary. She won’t notice my absence. Ever since she discovered that I had never met her cousin Frank in America, I have meant nothing in her life.”

“Then come on.”

“Where?”

“I’ll show you.”

That it was not the nearest and most direct route which they took to the trysting-place George became aware after he had followed his young guide through doors and up stairs and down stairs and had at last come to a halt in a room to which the sound of the music penetrated but faintly. He recognized the room. He had been in it before. It was the same room where he and Billie Dore had listened to Keggs telling the story of Lord Leonard and his leap. That window there, he remembered now, opened on to the very balcony from which the historic Leonard had done his spectacular dive. That it should be the scene of this other secret meeting struck George as appropriate. The coincidence appealed to him.

Albert vanished. George took a deep breath. Now that the moment had arrived for which he had waited so long he was aware of a return of that feeling of stage-fright which had come upon him when he heard Reggie Byng’s voice. This sort of thing, it must be remembered, was not in George’s usual line. His had been a quiet and uneventful life, and the only exciting thing which, in his recollection, had ever happened to him previous to the dramatic entry of Lady Maud into his taxi-cab that day in Piccadilly, had occurred at college nearly ten years before, when a festive room-mate—no doubt with the best motives—had placed a Mexican horned toad in his bed on the night of the Yale football game.

A light footstep sounded outside, and the room whirled round George in a manner which, if it had happened to Reggie Byng, would have caused that injudicious drinker to abandon the habits of a lifetime. When the furniture had returned to its place and the rug had ceased to spin, Maud was standing before him.

Nothing is harder to remember than a once-seen face. It had caused George a good deal of distress and inconvenience that, try as he might, he could not conjure up anything more than a vague vision of what the only girl in the world really looked like. He had carried away with him from their meeting in the cab only a confused recollection of eyes that shone and a mouth that curved in a smile; and the brief moment in which he was able to refresh his memory, when he found her in the lane with Reggie Byng and the broken-down car, had not been enough to add definiteness. The consequence was that Maud came upon him now with the stunning effect of beauty seen for the first time. He gasped. In that dazzling ball-dress, with the flush of dancing on her cheeks and the light of dancing in her eyes, she was so much more wonderful than any picture of her which memory had been able to produce for his inspection that it was as if he had never seen her before.

Even her brother, Percy, a stern critic where his nearest and dearest were concerned, had admitted on meeting her in the drawing-room before dinner that that particular dress suited Maud. It was a shimmering dream-thing of rose-leaves and moon-beams. That, at least, was how it struck George; a dressmaker would have found a longer and less romantic description for it. But that does not matter. Whoever wishes for a cold and technical catalogue of the stuffs which went to make up the picture that deprived George of speech may consult the files of the Belpher Intelligencer and Farmers’ Guide, and read the report of the editor’s wife, who “does” the dresses for the Intelligencer under the pen-name of “Birdie Bright-Eye”. As far as George was concerned, the thing was made of rose-leaves and moon-beams.

George, as I say, was deprived of speech. That any girl could possibly look so beautiful was enough to paralyse his faculties; but that this ethereal being straight from Fairyland could have stooped to love him—him—an earthy brute who wore sock-suspenders and drank coffee for breakfast … that was what robbed George of the power to articulate. He could do nothing but look at her.