A moment later Colonel Musgrave cleared his throat once more.

Then Mrs. Charteris laughed.  It was a pleasant laugh—­a clear, rippling carol of clean mirth that sparkled in her eyes, and dimpled in her wholesome cheeks.

“So! do you find it very, very awkward?”

“Awkward!” he cried.  Their glances met in a flash of comprehension which seemed to purge the air.  Musgrave was not in the least self-conscious now.  He laughed, and lifted an admonitory forefinger.

“Oh, good Cynara,” he said, “I am not what I was.  And so I cannot do it, my dear—­I really cannot possibly live up to the requirements of being a Buried Past.  In a proper story-book or play, I would have to come back from New Zealand or the Transvaal, all covered with glory and epaulets, and have found you in the last throes of consumption:  instead, you have fattened, Anne, which a Buried Past never does, and which shows a sad lack of appreciation for my feelings.  And I—­ah, my dear, I must confess that my hair is growing gray, and that my life has not been entirely empty without you, and that I ate and enjoyed two mutton-chops at luncheon, though I knew I should see you to-day.  I am afraid we are neither of us up to heroics, Anne.  So let’s be sensible and comfy, my dear.”

“You brute!” she cried—­not looking irreparably angry, yet not without a real touch of vexation; “don’t you know that every woman cherishes the picture of her former lovers sitting alone in the twilight, and growing lackadaisical over undying memories and faded letters?  And you—­you approach me, after I don’t dare to think how many years, as calmly as if I were an old schoolmate of your mother’s, and attempt to talk to me about mutton-chops!  You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Rudolph Musgrave.  You might, at least, have started a little at seeing me, and have clasped your hand to your heart, and have said, ‘You, you!’ or something of the sort.  I had every right to expect it.”

Mrs. Charteris pouted, and then trifled for a moment with the pages of her book.

“And—­and I want to tell you that I am sorry for the way I spoke to you—­that night,” she swiftly said.  Anne did not look at him.  “Women don’t understand things that are perfectly simple to men, I suppose—­I mean—­that is, Jack said—­”

“That you ought to apologize?  It was very like him”—­and Colonel Musgrave smiled to think how like John Charteris it was.  “Jack is quite wonderful,” he observed.

She looked up, saying impulsively, “Rudolph, you don’t know how happy he makes me.”

“Heartless woman, and would you tempt me to end the tragedy of my life with a Shakesperian fifth act of poisonings and assassination?  I spurn you, temptress.  For, after all, it was an unpleasantly long while ago we went mad for each other,” Musgrave announced, and he smiled.  “I fancy that the boy and girl we knew of are as dead now as Nebuchadnezzar.  ’Marian’s married, and I sit here alive and merry at’—­well, not at forty year, unluckily—­”