"At last!" he remarked, holding out his hand pleasantly. "I have been expecting to see you for some time, Miss Rowan."
"You have been expecting to see me?" she repeated, raising her eyes to his. "How strange!"
"Why strange?" he answered, glancing around the room, and lowering his voice a little. "Don't you remember at our last meeting you promised to bring my tea a few hours later? Since then, I have not even seen you, nor have you sent me a line."
She raised her eyes again and looked at him. They were very beautiful eyes, but he did not understand the somewhat blank expression which shone out of them. "I do not understand you," she said quietly.
Deane would have been irritated, but something in her manner struck him as so strange that his feeling turned to one of bewilderment. "Come," he said, "you are not going to suggest that I have been dreaming, or that you have had one of these fashionable lapses of memory? You remember meeting me in that room in the Universal Hotel?"
Without change of countenance or expression she answered, "I have never been in the Universal Hotel in my life!"
Deane looked at her, his lips a little parted, and as he looked his feeling of bewilderment grew. "My dear young lady," he protested, "do you mean to tell me--"
"You have been mistaking me for someone else, I think," she said calmly. "There are so many people about who are like me. We will not talk of this just now, if you do not mind. I have come to you from my brother."
"My brother is free," she went on. "He was released at nine o'clock this morning. The doctor at the prison signed a certificate that he has only a month or so to live. He is free on the understanding that he goes away to some quiet place. He came to me an hour ago. It is at his wish that I am here."
"He wishes to see you," she said. "That is all. He does not think that there is any risk about it, under the circumstances. We are staying for the night at the Grand Hotel. To-morrow we shall go down to Devonshire or Cornwall. He will be glad if you will come and see him as soon as possible."
"I will come," Deane said, "but first, Miss Rowan, I must have an understanding with you."
"An understanding with me?" she repeated slowly.