“I don’t think it’s quite kind of you to say that, Miss Avory,” he answered, a trifle nettled, for all that killing glance; for all that beseeching, cooing tone. “You know you do not believe what you are saying.”
She had been leaning over the gate which led out of the flower garden in front of the house. He was passing out to set off on his numerous self-imposed duties, having for their object the keeping everything straight during his friend’s absence. The morning was young still—not quite ten o’clock. He was hurrying by with a pleasant inquiry as to her well-being, when arrested by her speech as above.
“Thank you,” she answered, “I do happen to believe it, though. You never come near me now—in fact, you avoid me like the plague. We have not had one talk together since you came back. However, you don’t care—now, as I said before.”
To an unprejudiced hearer conversant with the state of affairs, this was pretty thick. For by that time it was manifest to all that the only person who had any chance of a “talk together” with the speaker—as she euphemistically put it—was Sellon; and long before it was to all thus manifest the fact was painfully evident to Renshaw Fanning.
“If it is as you say, I don’t think you can blame me,” he answered. “I thought my leaving you alone was exactly what you would wish. And that idea you yourself seemed to bear out both by word and act.”
“Do you think I have so many—friends, that I can bear to part with one, Renshaw?”
Her tone was soft, pleading—suggestive of a tinge of despair. The velvety eyes seemed on the point of brimming, as her glance reproachfully met his, and a delicate flush came into her cheeks. She was standing beneath a cactus, whose great prismatic blossoms in the background hung like a shower of crimson stars, one of them just touching her dark hair. To the unprejudiced witness again, conversant with the facts, Violet Avory, standing there amid the sensuous falling of gorgeous blossoms, would have recalled some graceful, purring, treacherous feline, beautiful in its satin-skinned curves, yet withal none the less deadly of intent towards the foolish creatures who should constitute its prey. In this man, however, in spite of the sharp awakening which the last couple of weeks had brought with them, her arts begat no repulsion. There was no breaking away from the old spell so easily. A mist floated before his eyes, and the old tremble came into his voice, as he replied—
“Friends! I should have thought you had plenty. For instance—”
“For instance what?”
“Well, I was going to say, look how anxious we have all been to see you become your old self again; but it struck me that after what you begun by saying I had better not.”