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She saw him first. Otherwise he might have fled. But he was right upon her before he saw her. Indeed, he heard her before he saw her.

“Good afternoon, Mr Coe.”

“Mimi!”

The Vaillacs were in Brighton! He had chosen practically the other end of the world for his honeymoon, and lo! by some awful clumsiness of fate the Vaillacs were at the same end! The very people from whom he wished to conceal his honeymoon until it was over would know all about it at the very start! Relations between the two Olives would be still more strained and difficult! In brief, from optimism he swung violently back to darkest pessimism. What could be worse than to be caught red-handed in a surreptitious honeymoon?

She noticed his confusion, and he knew that she noticed it. She was a little girl. But she was also a little woman, a little Frenchwoman, who spoke English perfectly–and yet with a difference! They had flirted together, she and Mr Coe. She had a new mother now, but for years she had been without a mother, and she would receive callers at her father’s house (if he happened to be out) with a delicious imitation of a practised hostess.

He raised his hat and shook hands and tried to play the game.

“What are you doing here, Mimi?” he asked.

“What are you doing here?” she parried, laughing. And then, perceiving his increased trouble, and that she was failing in tact, she went on rapidly, with a screwing up of the childish shoulders and something between a laugh and a grin: “It’s my back. It seems it’s not strong. And so we’ve taken an ever so jolly little house for the autumn, because of the air, you know. Didn’t you know?”

No, he did not know. That was the worst of strained relations. You were not informed of events in advance.

“Where?” he asked.

“Oh!” she said, pointing. “That way. On the road to Rottingdean. Near the big girls’ school. We came in on that lovely electric railway–along the beach. Have you been on it, Mr Coe?”

Terrible! Rottingdean was precisely the scene of his honeymoon. The hazard of fate was truly appalling. He and his wife might have walked one day straight into the arms of her sister! He went hot and cold.

“And where are the others?” he asked nervously.

“Mamma”–she coloured as she used this word, so strange on her lips–“mamma’s at home. Father may come to-night. And Ada has brought us here so that Jean can have his hair cut. He didn’t want to come without me.”

“Ada?”

“Ada’s a new servant. She’s just gone in there again to see how long the barber will be.” Mimi indicated a barber’s shop opposite. “And I’m waiting here,” she added.

“Mimi,” he said, in a confidential tone, “can you keep a secret?”

She grew solemn. “Yes.” She smiled seriously. “What?”

“About meeting me. Don’t tell anybody you’ve met me to-day. See?”

“Not Jean?”

“No, not Jean. But later on you can tell–when I give you the tip. I don’t want anybody to know just now.”

It was a shame. He knew it was a shame. He deliberately flattered her by appealing to her as to a grown woman. He deliberately put a cajoling tone into his voice. He would not have done it if Mimi had not been Mimi–if she had been an ordinary sort of English girl. But she was Mimi. And the temptation was very strong. She promised, gravely. He knew that he could rely on her.

Hurrying away lest Jean and the servant might emerge from the barber’s, he remembered with compunction that he had omitted to show any curiosity about Mimi’s back.

III

The magnificent woman was to be waiting for him in the lounge of the Royal York Hotel at a quarter to four. She was coming in to Brighton by the Rottingdean omnibus, which function, unless the driver changes his mind, occurs once in every two or three hours. He, being under the necessity of telephoning to London on urgent business, had hired a bicycle and ridden in. Despite the accident to this prehistoric machine, he arrived at the Royal York half a minute before the Rottingdean omnibus passed through the Old Steine and set down the magnificent woman his wife. The sight of her stepping off the omnibus really did thrill him. They entered the hotel together, and, accustomed though the Royal York is to the reception of magnificent women, Olive made a sensation therein. As for him, he could not help feeling just as though he had eloped with her. He could not help fancying that all the brilliant company in the lounge was murmuring under the strains of the band: “That johnny there has certainly eloped with that splendid creature!”