Her eyes dilated as she listened, scarce with fear, but again with the unexplained foreboding.
“Sir,” she said, after a pause, “your words are very strange; I do not understand them.”
“My dear,” said Rockhurst, his languid lids drooping a little now over the first keenness of his gaze, which seemed to narrow his scrutiny to something cruel as a blade, “I have just said it, ’tis a dull world. Will you complain of its strangeness once in a way? Why have you covered up your pretty foot? I vow I thought of Diana in the woodland glades when I saw the arch of its instep.” And, saying this, he opened his brilliant glance once more full upon her. “Diana did I say?” he cried. “Nay, no cold goddess! Far from me the omen!… A nymph. Aurora, with the sun in her hair, and all the roses in her cheeks!”
The blood which had rushed violently to Diana Harcourt’s temples ebbed away as quickly, leaving her white as the drifts without.
These were, no doubt, but idle words of gallantry; and all her woman’s instinctive pride warned her against the shame of seeming to attach any other significance to them. Yet whether glinting between half-closed lids or widely open upon her, the man’s eyes seemed to her to have some terrible, some merciless thought in them—a thought strangely at variance with the dignity of his appearance, the gravity, almost the sadness of his countenance; horribly at variance with the grey which besprinkled the raven of his locks.
“I am not of the town, and not accustomed to fine speeches and compliments.…”
She framed the phrase in pitiful attempt to stem the panic that was gaining upon her. He still sat motionless, his hands crossed, half smiling.
“Sir,” she cried, now angrily, “are there no women in this place? Will you not, in courtesy, allow me the company of one, till my servants arrive?”
“My dear,” he answered her sarcastically, “will my company not really suffice?”