“Oh, yes,” he exclaimed quickly; “the one I did go to the Gare with.”
“Yes, the one who wrote Uncle John about you.”
“Did he write about me? What has that Zuricher man to say of me?”
She rose to her feet and stood beside the fire, staring down into its leaping blades of light and flame.
“You know what he said as well as I do,—just everything that he could to make trouble for you and me.”
Then her wrath began to rise, as it always did when her mind recurred to this particular subject.
“What do you suppose made him bother to do such a mean thing? Why did he want to make all that trouble for? Why couldn’t he stick to his own business and let us alone? It is maddening to think of. I shall never forgive him—never!”
Von Ibn raised the heavy darkness of his eyes up to her profile, and a dancing light passed over the unutterable tenderness that shadowed their glow.
“What trouble has he make?” he asked gently; “why may you never forgive him? Come to me, here upon my knee, and tell me of that.”
He held out his hand, smiling, and she smiled too, and came to take her place upon the seat which he had indicated to her.