Clinging to Frank’s hand as he bade her adieu at a side door, she exclaimed ingenuously:
“I wish I had something to give you, Mr. Dormer—something to make you think always of this day, and what you have done for me!”
“I need no souvenir to keep you in my thoughts, Florence,” he answered, smiling down at her animated face.
“But I should like you to have a ring or something to look at when you are in India, just to remind you how mamma and I regretted your leaving us.”
“Wait till I come back,” he said hurriedly. “If you are the same Florence I leave, I will ask you for what I would sooner have than all the diamonds of Golconda.”
The ringing of the second dinner bell made Florence start away to change her dress, and try and still the trembling in her limbs, before she made her appearance in the drawing room for the evening.
CHAPTER II.
SHADOWS.
Mr. Heriton, a portly, handsome man, scarcely past the middle age, was walking about the drawing room, addressing an occasional observation to his lady, who was sitting near a window which commanded the route Frank and Florence had taken an hour previously.
She had the hectic color and fragile form of continual suffering, and every time Mr. Heriton raised his voice or pushed a chair out of his way she put her hand to her side as if to stay the quickened beating of her heart. But she answered him cheerfully, with a smile on her lip, though a close observer might have detected in her eyes an anxious scrutiny of her restless husband, who was both moody and irritable.