* * * * *
The two companions were seated in the parlour, side by side—the hour was late, but Gatliffe still lingered.
“You have told me your sorrows and troubles,” said his female companion, “and no one can sympathise with you to a greater extent than myself, for I too have been deserted by a cold, cruel, heartless man, but it is all over now and I strive to forget the past—the bitter past.”
After this exordium she told her companion a specious tale, in which she made herself a most self-sacrificing creature.
She wound up by declaring that she was living on her means all alone in the world.
“Alone—eh?” cried Gatliffe. “Well, yes, I had a female companion, it is true, and a young man whom I have brought up, making this place his home; but he is like the rest, ungrateful and selfish.”
She sighed, and drew her chair nearer to his.
“Ah! if I could find but one sympathising friend,” she murmured; “for, oh! Mr. Gatliffe, we can none of us live only for ourselves. It is not in the nature and order of things—is it?”
“I don’t think it is,” he murmured, glancing at her dark, dreamy, voluptuous eyes—glancing at her marble bust, which was at this time a little more revealed than it had been upon their first entrance into the parlour.
“You agree with me, then?”