“I—­I should be sorry to lose him again.  We haven’t many friends, in these days.”  The bright head was bowed over the child’s, as Rosemary clung to her mother’s dress.

“You never lost me,” said Hugh Egerton.  “It was I who lost you.  Evie, you don’t know what black years these have been.  I loved you so.”

“But that—­was—­long ago.”

“It was always.”

“Hugh!  I thought you must have learned to hate me.”

“Hate you, because I couldn’t make you care for me as—­I hoped you would, and because you cared for someone else?  No, I—­”

“But—­I did care for you.  It was for my father’s sake that—­that—­ah, I can’t talk of it, Hugh.  You know, we were so poor after father lost his money, I tried with all my heart to forget, and to do my best for—­my husband.  Perhaps it was my punishment that he—­oh, Hugh, I was so miserable.  And then—­then he went away.  He was tired of me.  He was on a yacht, and there was a great storm.  But you must have read in the papers—­”

“Never.  I never knew till this day.”

“It was more than three years ago.”

Hugh was very pale.  Three years ago—­three long years in which he had worked, and tried not to think of her!  And if he had known—­“You see, I’ve had a queer life, knocking about in strange places,” he said, trying to speak calmly.  “Often I didn’t see any newspapers for weeks together.  I thought of you always as rich and happy, living in England, the wife of Sir Edward Clifford—­”

“Rich and happy,” she repeated, bitterly.  “How little one knows of another’s life.  After his death, there was nothing—­there had been some wild speculations; and the estates went with the title, of course, to his cousin.  But, yes,—­in a way you were right.  I was rich and happy because I had Rosemary.”

“And Rosemary had you, Angel,” cried the child, who had been listening, puzzled and bewildered, not knowing that they had forgotten her presence until this moment.  “Rosemary had you.  And now we’ve all got each other—­till the fairy father vanishes.”

“But I shan’t have to vanish after all,” said Hugh.

* * * * *

After that, it seemed they had been together but for a moment, when a wild wail went moaning through the house; the first gong for the pensionnaires’ dinner.

So loud it was that it hushed their voices for a long minute.  And when cool silence came again, Hugh begged that the two would have their Christmas Eve dinner with him, at his hotel.  “There’s so much to plan for to-morrow, and all the days,” he pleaded.  “And just for once Rosemary shall have a late dinner like the grown-ups.  Do say yes.”

So Evelyn said yes.  And it was not until they were all three seated in the restaurant of the Hotel de Paris, that he remembered he had been engaged to dine at the Beau Soleil with Mademoiselle and the Comtesse, her mother.