Lord Cecil was almost guilty of a start.
He could not speak. The color rose to his face, and his eyes dropped from hers to the diamond pendant that glistened on the white neck.
She laughed softly, and the diamonds seemed to laugh with her, as they scintillated in the subdued light.
“Am I right? You need not answer—your face is eloquent enough! And now I will tell you why I came here—I came to see you.”
He tried to speak, but she held up her fan to command him to silence.
“You see, I know the marquis and his charming ways better than you do. I knew that he wished us to meet, that we might—how shall I put it?—respect each other. Well, Lord Cecil, I have seen you, and you have seen me. But”—she rose with slow and graceful ease and took up the train of her dress—“but you are not obliged to marry me, and I”—she laughed softly up at his handsome face—“I am certainly not obliged to marry you. And now, in reward for my candor—I have been candid, haven’t I?—you will not leave me alone in this castle of Giant Despair?”
She did not wait for his answer, but with a soft “good-night” and a smiling nod, glided from the room.
With the smile still on her face, Lady Grace went slowly up the great staircase to the magnificent apartments which had been prepared for her. The smile was still on her face while her maid brushed the long tresses of silky hair that fell like a shower of gold over the white shoulders, and even when she was alone she smiled still as she leaned forward and looked at her face in the glass.
“Yes,” she murmured, falling back and half-closing her eyes. “He is worth winning. There is only one thing I fear.” She paused, with a faint sigh. “I am afraid that I shall love him too well!”
Lord Cecil stood with his back to the fire for twenty minutes after Lady Grace had left him. To say that he was amazed would be only inadequately to describe the state of his feelings. At last, as if he were making an effort to cast off the bewilderment which had fallen upon him, he wished the old lady good-night, and went, not to his room, but out on to the terrace, for he felt a kind of craving for the open air, in which he might rid himself of the effects produced by his insight into his uncle’s character and the extraordinary candor of Lady Grace.