“Do you think it soon, Miss Macy?” asked Mainwaring, turning pale in spite of himself.
“I quite forgot—that you were here as an invalid only, and that we owe our pleasure to the accident of your pain.”
She spoke a little artificially, he thought, yet her cheeks had not lost their pink bloom, nor her eyes their tranquillity. Had he heard Minty's criticism he might have believed that the organic omission noticed by her was a fact.
“And now that your good work as Sister of Charity is completed, you'll be able to enter the world of gayety again with a clear conscience,” said Mainwaring, with a smile that he inwardly felt was a miserable failure. “You'll be able to resume your morning rides, you know, which the wretched invalid interrupted.”
Louise raised her clear eyes to his, without reproach, indignation, or even wonder. He felt as if he had attempted an insult and failed.
“Does my cousin know you are going so soon?” she asked finally.
“No, I did not know myself until to-day. You see,” he added hastily, while his honest blood blazoned the lie in his cheek, “I've heard of some miserable business affairs that will bring me back to England sooner that I expected.”
“I think you should consider your health more important than any mere business,” said Louise. “I don't mean that you should remain HERE,” she added with a hasty laugh, “but it would be a pity, now that you have reaped the benefit of rest and taking care of yourself, that you should not make it your only business to seek it elsewhere.”
Mainwaring longed to say that within the last half hour, living or dying had become of little moment to him; but he doubted the truth or efficacy of this timeworn heroic of passion. He felt, too, that anything he said was a mere subterfuge for the real reason of his sudden departure. And how was he to question her as to that reason? In escaping from these subterfuges—he was compelled to lie again. With an assumption of changing the subject, he said calmly, “Richardson thought he had met you before—in Menlo Park, I think.”
Amazed at the evident irrelevance of the remark, Louise said coldly, that she did not remember having seen him before.