“What a glorious view!” he exclaimed; “it is certainly a perfect spot.  Why, it has everything!  The sea and its waves to dash up at it—­and then this lovely garden for shelter and peace.  What a fortunate young woman you are!”

“Yes, am I not?”

“I have an old castle, too—­perhaps Henry has told you about it.  We have owned it ever since Adam, I suppose!” and he laughed.  “The grim part of this is rather like it in a way; I mean the stone passages and huge rooms—­but of course the architecture is different.  It has been the scene of every sort of fight.  I should like to show it to you some day.”

Stupefaction rose in Sabine’s mind.  After all, had she been mistaken, and had he really not recognized her?—­or had her acting of the night before convinced him that his first ideas must be wrong and that she was really not his wife!  Excitement thrilled her.  But if he was playing a part, she then must certainly play, too, and not speak to him about the divorce until he spoke to her.  Thus they were unconsciously the one set against the other and both determined that the other should show first hand.  It looked as though the interests of Lord Fordyce might be somehow forgotten!

They talked thus for half an hour, Michael asking questions about Heronac with polite interest and without ever saying a sentence with a double meaning, and she replying with frank information, and both burning with excitement and zest.  Then her great charm began to affect him so profoundly that unconsciously something of eagerness and emotion crept into his voice.  It was one of those voices full of extraordinarily attractive cadences at any time, and made for the seducing of a woman’s ear.  Sabine knew that she was enjoying herself with a wild kind of forbidden joy—­but she did not analyze its cause.  It could not be mean to Henry just to talk about Heronac when she was not by word or look deliberately trying to fascinate his friend—­she was only being naturally polite and casual.

“Arranstoun only wants the sea,” Michael said at last, “and then it would be as perfect as this.  I have a big, old sitting-room, too, that was once part of a great hall, and my bedroom is the other half—­a suite all to myself—­but I have not been there for five years—­I am going back from here.”

“How strange to be away from your home for so long,” Sabine remarked innocently.  “Where have you been?”

Then he told her all about China and Tibet.

“I had taken some kind of distaste for Arranstoun and shirked going there—­I shall have to face it now, I suppose, because it is such hard luck on the people when an owner is away, and so one must come up to the scratch.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “one must always do that.”

“I used to think out a lot of things when I was in the wilds—­and I grew to know that one is a great fool when young—­and a great brute.”

She began to pull her lavender to pieces—­this conversation was growing too dangerously fascinating and must be stopped at once.