The following afternoon she was sitting alone in the drawing-room, Lady Wyndover having gone out, when Lord Trafford was announced. He came in, looking rather grave and very aristocratic in his long frock coat. Esmeralda greeted him with her usual frankness.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Lady Wyndover is out; she has gone to the milliner’s. I am rather tired of buying hats and bonnets, and so I stayed at home. Will you have some tea—I was just going to ring for it—or don’t you take tea?”
Trafford said he would take some tea, and it was brought in. He seated himself in a lounge chair, and watched her as she poured out the tea. She was not in the least shy, not in the least embarrassed, and she asked him if he took sugar, as if she had known him all her life. He noticed that she looked particularly young and girlish in her plain afternoon dress, and that her hands, which he saw for the first time without their gloves, were, though brown, small and shapely. He noticed, too, how long and dark her lashes were, and that the beauty which he had remarked in the ball-room did not wane in the daylight; indeed, she looked even more charming. A book was lying on the couch beside her, and he took it up. It was a book of adventure, plentifully illustrated.
“Are you fond of reading?” he asked.
She hesitated a moment.
“I don’t know; it all depends upon the book. I haven’t read much, for there weren’t many books at Three Star, and I haven’t had time since I have been in London; and most of the books I see here are so silly. I like that one.”
She began to tell him what it was about, and for a moment lost herself in her description. Once or twice she laughed, and Trafford thought her laugh was a very pleasant and musical one.
“It’s full of adventure,” she said, “and all sorts of terrible things happen to the man—enough to kill ten men out of a book—but he gets through them all in a most wonderful manner. And he’s always saving some girl, and shooting some man; but the man who wrote it doesn’t seem to know the difference between a rifle and an ordinary gun—he ought to have lived in Three Star—but it isn’t bad.”
“You are fond of adventure?” he said. “You like riding and driving?”
“Oh, yes,” she said; “and so do you, don’t you?”