During the brief silence before she spoke again he was able to congratulate himself on his diplomacy.  He had checked his first impulse to come to her with his great news immediately on his return from Lakefield.  He had seen how relatively ineffective the information would be were it to proceed bluntly from himself.  He had even restrained Mrs. Bayford’s enthusiasm, in order to let the intelligence filter gently through the neutral agencies of common gossip.  In this way it would seem to Miss Grimston a discovery of her own, and appeal to her as an indirect corroboration of his word.  He had the less scruple in taking these precautions in that he believed Diane to have justified anything he might have said of her.  It was no small relief to a man of honor to know he had not been guilty of a gratuitous slander, even though it was only on a woman.  He awaited Miss Grimston’s next words with complacent expectancy, but when they came they surprised him.

“I wondered a little why you should have been at Lakefield.”

“I’m afraid you’ll think it was for a very foolish reason,” he laughed, “but I’ll tell you, if you want to know.  I went because I thought you were there.”

“I?  At three o’clock in the morning?”

“It was like this,” he went on.  “You’ll pardon me if I say anything to give you offence, but you’ll understand the reason why.  On the day when we all lunched together at the Restaurant Blitz—­you, Madame your aunt, your friend Monsieur Reggie Bradford, and I—­I was a little jealous of some understanding between you two, in which I was not included.  You spoke together in whispers, and exchanged glances in such a way that all my fears were aroused.  Afterward you went away with him.  That evening, at the Stuyvesant Club, I heard a strange rumor.  It was whispered from one to another until it reached me.  Your friend Monsieur Bradford is not a silent person, and what he knows is sure to become common property.  The rumor—­which I grant you was an absurd one—­was to the effect that he had persuaded you to run away and marry him; and that you had actually been seen on the way to Lakefield in his car.”

“I was in his car.  That’s quite true.”

“Ah?  Then there was some foundation for the report.  Madame your aunt will have told you how I hurried here, about eleven o’clock that night.  You had disappeared, leaving nothing behind but an enigmatic note saying you would explain your absence in the morning.  What was I to think, Mademoiselle?  I was afraid to think.  I didn’t stop to think.  I determined to follow you.  It was too late for any train, so I took an auto.  I reached the Bay Tree Inn—­and saw what I saw. Voila!”

A smile of amusement flickered over her grave features, but she made no remark.