“I quite believe, you know,” the voice was saying, “that a girl who stops here this summer will stop at nothing next.”
At the jest Annandale turned. There, pretty as a peach but rather more amusing, stood Fanny Price.
“Hamlet!” she exclaimed.
Annandale resembled the Dane as little as he did the devil. He was fully aware of that. But he was equally aware that he must seem blue. He straightened himself and smiled. Then at once it occurred to him that Fanny might be a signal bearer.
“How do you do?” he said. “Don’t you want to come and sit on the terrace? When did you get here?”
“Just now. I am over from Newport. They told me there that I ought to come in disguise. They call it slumming.”
“Yes,” Annandale inanely and eagerly replied. Of the little speech he had caught but one word—Newport.
“Now, if I go with you, will you give me something pink, something with raspberries in it?”
Fanny, as she spoke, disengaged herself from the people with whom she had come.
“You saw Sylvia, didn’t you?” he asked, when at last through coils of girls and men they reached the terrace below.
Fanny nodded. “Suppose we sit here,” she said, indicating a table from which grew a big parasol.
“Did she say anything?”