“You have never yet seen the woman whom you would ask to be your wife?” she said.

There was a brief silence, and then he replied: 

“No, in all truth, I have not, Philippa.”

A little bird was singing on a swaying bough just above them—­to the last day of her life it seemed to her that she remembered the notes.  The sultry silence seemed to deepen.  She broke it.

“But, Norman,” she said, in a low voice, “have you not seen me?”

He tried to laugh to hide his embarrassment, but it was a failure.

“I have seen you—­and I admire you.  I have all the affection of a brother for you, Philippa—­” and then he paused abruptly.

“But,” she supplied, “you have never thought of making me your wife?  Speak to me quite frankly, Norman.”

“No, Philippa, I have not.”

“As matters stand between us, they require explanation,” she said; and he saw her lips grow pale.  “It is not pleasant for me to have to mention it, but I must do it.  Norman, do you quite forget what we were taught to believe when we were children—­that our lives were to be passed together?”

“My dearest Philippa, pray spare yourself and me.  I did not know that you even remembered that childish nonsense.”

She raised her dark eyes to his face, and there was something in them before which he shrank as one who feels pain.

“One word, Norman—­only one word.  That past which has been so much to me—­that past in which I have lived, even more than in the present or the future—­am I to look upon it as what you call nonsense?”

He took her hand in his.

“My dear Philippa,” he said, “I hate myself for what I have to say—­it makes me detest even the sound of my own voice.  Yet you are right—­there is nothing for us but perfect frankness; anything else would be foolish.  Neither your mother nor mine had any right to try to bind us.  Such things never answer, never prosper.  I cannot myself imagine how they, usually so sensible, came in this instance to disregard all dictates of common sense.  I have always looked upon the arrangement as mere nonsense; and I hope you have done the same.  You are free as air—­and so am I.”

She made no answer, but, after a few minutes, when she had regained her self-possession, she said: 

“The sun is warm on the water—­I think we had better return;” and, as they went back, she spoke to him carelessly about the new rage for garden-parties.

“Does she care or not?” thought Lord Arleigh to himself.  “Is she pleased or not?  I cannot tell; the ways of women are inscrutable.  Yet a strange idea haunts me—­an uncomfortable suspicion.”

As he watched her, there seemed to him no trace of anything but light-hearted mirth and happiness about her.  She laughed and talked; she was the center of attraction, the life of the fete.  When he spoke to her, she had a careless jest, a laughing word for him; yet he could not divest himself of the idea that there was something behind all this.  Was it his fancy, or did the dark eyes wear every now and then an expression of anguish?  Was it his fancy, or did it really happen that when she believed herself unobserved, the light died out of her face?