Mary returned. “’Twas a pedlar, ma’am.”
“Another one?” Isabel said, surprised. “I thought you said it was a pedlar when the bell rang a little while ago.”
“Mister George said it was, ma’am; he went to the door,” Mary informed her, disappearing.
“There seem to be a great many of them,” Isabel mused. “What did yours want to sell, George?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You must have cut him off short!” she laughed; and then, still standing in the doorway, she noticed the big silver frame upon the table beside him. “Gracious, Georgie!” she exclaimed. “You have been investing!” and as she came across the room for a closer view, “Is it—is it Lucy?” she asked half timidly, half archly. But the next instant she saw whose likeness was thus set forth in elegiac splendour—and she was silent, except for a long, just-audible “Oh!”
He neither looked up nor moved.
“That was nice of you, Georgie,” she said, in a low voice presently. “I ought to have had it framed, myself, when I gave it to you.”
He said nothing, and, standing beside him, she put her hand gently upon his shoulder, then as gently withdrew it, and went out of the room. But she did not go upstairs; he heard the faint rustle of her dress in the hall, and then the sound of her footsteps in the “reception room.” After a time, silence succeeded even these slight tokens of her presence; whereupon George rose and went warily into the hall, taking care to make no noise, and he obtained an oblique view of her through the open double doors of the “reception room.” She was sitting in the chair which he had occupied so long; and she was looking out of the window expectantly—a little troubled.
He went back to the library, waited an interminable half hour, then returned noiselessly to the same position in the hall, where he could see her. She was still sitting patiently by the window.