“She’d like to see you now, sir, if you please,” she said.
CHAPTER II.
THE QUEST OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTY (continued)
Gilead re-entered the quiet little room with a feeling as if he were desecrating a woodland shrine. As yet he could not associate that figure of immortal loveliness with the piteous vision of the advertisement. He saw her risen to greet him, all warm and flushed, a maid, yet seeming young-motherly in the soft plenitude of her form, with evidences of some suppressed emotion in her eyes. Her drooped right hand held the telegram. She addressed him in a voice of sweet low embarrassment:—
“Your visit, I am afraid, was badly timed—for me. I am so sorry. It has reference, I understand, to my advertisement in the Daily Post. Will you please tell me in what way?”
She motioned him to seat himself, and herself sank somewhat languidly upon the sofa she had just quitted.
“I trust,” he began; but she stopped him:—
“Please do not speak of it. It was a momentary recurrence of a seizure which had overtaken me once before, and was due—”
She paused. “To the receipt of a telegram?” he suggested gently.
She turned her head away; then refaced him, with a deeper flush on her cheeks.
“I am quite recovered,” she said. “I am very much to blame for my weakness.”