"It seems a long time since I saw you," Mr. Dalton said, rather clumsily, as he took Lettice's hand into a very cordial clasp. "It was that day in December when your brother had just got his scholarship at Trinity."
"Oh, yes; that day! I remember it very well," said Lettice, drawing a long breath, which was not exactly a sigh, although it sounded like one. "I gave up being a child on that day, I believe!"
"There have been many changes since then." Brooke Dalton was not brilliant in conversation.
"You have heard of them all, I suppose? Yes, my mother and I are in London now."
"You will allow me to call, I hope?"
Lettice had but time to signify her consent, when Mrs. Hartley seized on her again, but this time Lettice did not so much object to be cross-examined. She recognized the fact that Mrs. Hartley's aim was kindly, and she submitted to be asked questions about her work and her prospects, and to answer them with a frankness that amazed herself. But in the very midst of the conversation she was conscious of being much observed by two or three people in the room; notably by Brooke Dalton, who had planted himself in a position from which he could look at her without attracting the other visitors' remark; and also by a tall man with a dark, melancholy face, deep-set eyes, and a peaked Vandyke beard, whose glances were more furtive than those of Dalton, but equally interested and intent. He was a handsome man, and Lettice found herself wondering whether he were not "somebody," and somebody worth talking to, moreover; for he was receiving, in a languid, half-indifferent manner, a great deal of homage from the women in the room. He seemed bored by it, and was turning away in relief from a lady who had just quoted half-a-dozen lines of Shelley for his especial behoof, when Mrs. Hartley, who had been discussing Feuerbach and the German materialists with Lettice, caught his eye, and beckoned him to her side.
"Mr. Walcott," she said, "I never heard that you were a materialist, and I don't think it is very likely; so you can condole with Miss Campion on having been condemned to translate five hundred pages of Feuerbach. Now, isn't that terrible?"
"I don't know Feuerbach," said the poet, after he had bowed to Lettice, "but it sounds warm and comfortable on a wintry day. Nevertheless, I do condole with her."
"I am not sure that I need condolence," said Lettice. "The work was really very interesting, and one likes to know what any philosopher has to say for himself, whether one believes in his theories or not. I must say I have enjoyed reading Feuerbach,—though he is a German with a translatable name."
This was a flippant speech, as Lettice acknowledged to herself; but, then, Mr. Walcott's speech had been flippant to begin with, and she wanted to give as good as she got.