Lady Cynthia had, however, betrayed her whereabouts by her laugh, and one of the officials of the Association sent her a message to the effect that the second of the Mixed Doubles would be played when the court would be vacant at the end of the Gentlemen's Singles.
"I must rush," she cried. "I have a good fighting chance for the M.D.s., though not a ghost of one for the L.S.s. Come round with me, Prissy."
Priscilla said _au revoir_ to Lady Gainsforth and Mrs. Marlowe and strolled away with Lady Cynthia's arm through hers; but before she had turned the corner of the pavilion she found herself face to face with Mr. Wingfield, and he took off his cap and greeted her also as if he was an old friend--it seemed that he had been talking to Lady Cynthia earlier in the day.
In a few minutes they were alone together, Lady Cynthia having hurried to the court which was now vacant. They were alone, with something like two hundred people about them.
"I have not seen her for two years," said she. "Funny, isn't it, that girls may be the closest of chums at school and yet never see each other again in life? Of course it is less funny in regard to Lady Cynthia and myself, because we move in what's called different spheres."
"Of course," he assented with a laugh. "I never thought of that. Yes, to be sure; you are the daughter of a farmer and her sire is an earl. Her grandfather was a working navvy, and no human being knows who his father was. Your grandfather and great-grandfather and great-great-great-grand-grand-grandfather was a Wad-hurst of Athalsdean on back to the time of William the Conqueror, a noted robber who flourished in the year ten hundred and something, and brought over a crowd of gaolbirds to England to turn out the Saxons. They didn't turn out the Wadhurst of the time, and so here you are moving in a different sphere from Lady Cynthia. And that brings us up to the present moment. Now maybe you'll tell me in what particular sphere you've been moving since I saw you last. That's ten days ago. I hoped to have the chance of coming across you at some place."
"I have not been very far beyond the boundaries of the farm," she said. "I have been fully occupied. You see, I'm very fond of two things--music and milk, and both are absorbing all my time."