Carry did not know what he meant, and looked so. Mr. Prince smiled re-assuringly.
Presently Carry began to whimper.
Mr. Prince softly stepped beside her chair.
“I am afraid,” he said with a very peculiar light in his eye, and a singular dropping of the corners of his mustache,—“I am afraid you are taking this too deeply. It will be some days before you are called upon to make a decision. Let us talk of something else. I hope you caught no cold last evening.”
Carry's face shone out again in dimples.
“You must have thought us so queer! It was too bad to give you so much trouble.”
“None, whatever, I assure you. My sense of propriety,” he added demurely, “which might have been outraged, had I been called upon to help three young ladies out of a schoolroom window at night, was deeply gratified at being able to assist them in again.” The door-bell rang loudly, and Mr. Prince rose. “Take your own time, and think well before you make your decision.” But Carry's ear and attention were given to the sound of voices in the hall. At the same moment, the door was thrown open, and a servant announced, “Mrs. Tretherick and Mr. Robinson.”
The afternoon train had just shrieked out its usual indignant protest at stopping at Genoa at all, as Mr. Jack Prince entered the outskirts of the town, and drove towards his hotel. He was wearied and cynical. A drive of a dozen miles through unpicturesque outlying villages, past small economic farmhouses, and hideous villas that violated his fastidious taste, had, I fear, left that gentleman in a captious state of mind. He would have even avoided his taciturn landlord as he drove up to the door; but that functionary waylaid him on the steps. “There's a lady in the sittin'-room, waitin' for ye.” Mr. Prince hurried up stairs, and entered the room as Mrs. Starbottle flew towards him.
She had changed sadly in the last ten years. Her figure was wasted to half its size. The beautiful curves of her bust and shoulders were broken or inverted. The once full, rounded arm was shrunken in its sleeve; and the golden hoops that encircled her wan wrists almost slipped from her hands as her long, scant fingers closed convulsively around Jack's. Her cheek-bones were painted that afternoon with the hectic of fever: somewhere in the hollows of those cheeks were buried the dimples of long ago; but their graves were forgotten. Her lustrous eyes were still beautiful, though the orbits were deeper than before. Her mouth was still sweet, although the lips parted more easily over the little teeth, and even in breathing, and showed more of them than she was wont to do before. The glory of her blonde hair was still left: it was finer, more silken and ethereal, yet it failed even in its plenitude to cover the hollows of the blue-veined temples.
“Clara!” said Jack reproachfully.