It was his turn to flush now, and his eyes dropped under her fixed, earnest gaze.
“Do you know why I say that? It is because you may not misunderstand me when I ask you—as I do now—to let me be your friend.”
“I am grateful, Lady Grace——” he began, in a low voice, but she stopped him.
“Wait. It is no idle, meaningless offer. I will be a real friend, Lord Cecil, if you will let me. I will prove that a woman and a man can be friends without being—lovers! Now, then, trust me, and show me that you trust me by telling me what this trouble is.”
Her eyes looked so honest, so eager, so trustworthy, that Cecil—his heart wrung with the misery of suspense and doubt, his brain heavy and bewildered by fatigue and harassing anxiety—fell into the net.
“I will trust you, Lady Grace,” he said, and there was a quiver in his voice which was no discredit to his manliness. “In a word, I have lost the girl I love.”
“Lost her!” she said, with wide-open eyes. “Ah, yes! I know! Miss Marlowe, is it not?”
“Yes,” he said. “Do you know anything? For Heaven’s sake tell me everything——”
“I will,” she said. “But I have heard nothing more than this—that she has gone to Australia with—with a man to whom she was engaged before——”
“And you believe it?” he said, with grave reproach.