And pauses for lack of words.
Mr. Temple assists her.
"To look at your pretty face, or perhaps to kiss yourself, as a spirit might. Labour thrown away, Miss Marston, and most certainly unprofitable, if what the poet says is true:
"Some there be that shadows kiss;
Such have but a shadow's bliss."
Nelly Marston regains her composure.
"We did not expect you to-night, Mr. Temple."
"Then I should be all the more welcome," he answers gaily. "I am starving, Nelly----"
She checks him by a look.
"I beg your pardon. Miss Nelly Marston, I am starving with hunger. I have not had a morsel of food in my mouth since the morning."
"There will be no difficulty in reviving your fainting soul, Mr. Temple," she says, with a desperate attempt to imitate his light manner; "but Lady Temple must not know you are here. 'Miss Marston,' she said to me this afternoon, my nephew will be absent for some time. He will write to me regularly. Directly his letters arrive, let me have them. If I am asleep place them at once by my side.'"