"It seems she's too wonderful. Only one or two people are going."
"Mrs. Ogilvie kindly asked me," said Bertie modestly. "Of course you'll go and hear what the soothsayer has to say about the velvet case?"
"Perhaps, but I'm not sure.... I feel restless.... I must say, it does seem unlikely there could be much harm in a woman who has her portrait painted in porcelain from a photograph—by the young lady at the photographer's, I dare say, who makes the appointments and touches up the negatives. And yet—perhaps that very innocence—that sweet, blank expression—even the tight sleeves and the two boys may make her all the more attractive!"
Wilton got up.
"Good-bye," he said. "You're perverse. It's no use, I see, telling you not to worry; but please try to realise there's no occasion."
"Wouldn't you say just the same if you thought there had been occasion?" she persisted.
"Absolutely. But that doesn't prove I'm not sincere now."
He pressed her hand with a look that he hoped conveyed the highest respect, the tenderest sympathy, a deep, though carefully suppressed passion, and a longing to administer some refined and courteous consolation, and went away.
Wilton was only twenty-five, so, naturally, as soon as he got home, he tried the expression in the mirror, and was horribly disappointed in it.
"I must have looked as if I'd suddenly got an awful twinge of neuralgia," he said to himself.