That night he was back with Lane at the big hotel, and dined in the great _salle à manger_, amid the gay laughter and chatter.
Across in a corner sat the white-bearded old man with his married daughter. He seemed rather deaf, for ever and anon she bent to speak with him. And as she did so, he saw that she was most solicitous of his welfare, as only a daughter could be.
Later that night, there being the usual dance in the big ballroom, Geoffrey went in, and being attracted by her, invited her to dance with him, and she accepted.
She was alone. The old man had retired to bed.
Geoffrey’s interest was purely one of curiosity. The girl-wife seemed to be carrying out her duty to her father, and was terribly bored in doing so.
Before they parted that night he learned that she had come from Serbia, and that her name was Marya Pavlovitch. She had married a state official a year and a half before. Her father’s name was Colonel Yovan Vanoff, a well-known officer of the King’s Guard at Belgrade, who had fought valiantly against the Turks in the first Balkan war, and had gained distinction at the decisive Battle of Kumanovo.
“My husband is in England,” she told Geoffrey, speaking English well. “He is attached to the Serbian Mission. So I am here with my father, who, alas! is becoming daily more feeble.”
Next evening they met again--and the next. The old man was most affable, and day after day they had long chats in French, in which Lane often joined.
One afternoon Geoffrey went by boat along to Lucerne, eager and anxious. Mrs. Beverley and Sylvia had arrived at the Schweizerhof, that great hotel which overlooks the lake. They had tired of the Trossachs, and also of dusty London, so in accordance with young Falconer’s suggestion, they had arrived to spend a couple of weeks in “lovely Lucerne”--that town in which, before the war, one could spend a week under the wing of any tourist company for the modest sum of five guineas, railway fare included.
Geoffrey met Sylvia and her mother, and after half an hour in the great lounge of the hotel they dined together. The “Wild Widow” was charmed with the hotel and its outlook, while Sylvia, delighted at the retirement of the penurious Lord Hendlewycke, who now no longer visited them, contrived to snatch a few moments alone with her lover.