“Why, I think so too,” said her employer.
“The little bait,” she ventured, “is the only questionable part.”
“Bait? What bait?”
“She might have omitted the young, you see,” said the amanuensis. “People may construe it into an invitation to a personal interview.”
“Well, what harm, then?”
Miss Halifax turned one instant to him and, looking down again without speaking, resumed her work. He sat with his eyes fixed on her. Her sympathy and sweet reasonableness were generally so dependable that this sudden confession of the feminine sting in her a little surprised him. He did not like to think of it as wilful. His admiration for her was very great, and sometimes disturbing to himself. She had taken latterly to a black dress, as most becoming her official position, and the contrast it made with her creamy neck, and flower-like face, and lovely hair was sometimes dazzling. He found it often difficult to dissociate the beauty of her soul and body, or to estimate from which she drew her greater attractiveness.
He went out almost immediately, and without another word, and the moment he was well away the young lady turned on the secretary.
“Why did you let him see that advertisement at all?”
“It is its third appearance in three days,” answered Nestle, “and I judged it no good to keep from him what he had probably already noticed. What is it you fear?”
He took a calendar containing a scrap of mirror from the mantelpiece, and put it down before her face. She pushed his hand away, with a peevish shrug of her shoulders, and he laughed and went off about his business.