Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/137

 belong to no one else than Margaret Addison. It was natural that her maiden name should first occur to him, but he remembered, as he edged his way laboriously towards her, that she had married just after he sailed for Burma; yes, she had married that amiable scapegrace Dick Vandeleur, who had met his death in the hunting-field nearly fifteen years ago.

As he drew near, Mrs. Vandeleur's gaze fell upon him for a brief instant; he thought that she had not recognised him, but before his spirits had time to suffer any consequent depression, her eyes returned to him, and as he smiled in answer to the surprise which he read in them, he saw her face flush, and then grow a little pale, before a responsive light of recognition dawned upon it. She took his hand silently when he offered it, eyeing him with the same faint smile, an expression in which welcome seemed to be gleaming through a cloud of apprehension.

"I'm not a ghost," he said, laughing; "I'm Geoffrey Vincent. Don't be ashamed of owning that you had quite forgotten me!"

"I knew you at once," she said simply. "So you are home at last: you must come and see me as soon as you can. This is my daughter Dorothy, and here is my brother—of course you remember Philip?—coming to tell us that the carriage is waiting. You will come, to-morrow—to prove that you are not a ghost? We shall expect you."

A fortnight later Sir Geoffrey was sitting in a punt, beguiling the afternoon of a rainy day by luring unwary roach to their destruction with a hair-line and pellets of paste, delicately kneaded by the taper fingers of Miss Dorothy Vandeleur. He was the