Lying upon a couch, over which that pale marble statue was bending with its cold lilies in mocking purity, lay a pale little creature, covered with a pink eider-down quilt, which but half concealed a morning dress of faint azure; quantities of delicate Valenciennes lace fluttered, like snowflakes, around her wrists and bosom, and formed the principal material of a dainty little cap, under which her golden tresses were gathered. She looked like a girl of twelve pretending womanhood.
When Tom came in she uttered a sudden cry, flung up her hands and dropped them in a loose clasp over her face, which flushed under them like a rose.
Tom walked straight to the couch, drew one of the fragile gilded chairs close to it, and sat down.
"Don't—don't—go away. It's cruel. I shall faint with shame," she cried, trembling all over.
"Not till you have answered me a few questions," said Tom, firmly. "Questions that I have a right to ask and you must answer."
Elsie drew the little hands slowly from her face and looked at him. The blue eyes—grown larger from illness—opened wide, her lips parted. That was not the lover she had trifled with and domineered over. She was afraid of him and shrunk away close to the wall.
"Elsie, one word," said Tom, pressing a hand firmly on each knee and bending towards her.
Her lips parted wider, and she watched him with the glance of a frightened bird when a cat looks in at the door of its cage.
"You have come to torment me," she faltered.
"Torment you! I! It isn't in me to do that. Torment! I do not know what it is."