Olivia went into the drawing-room, and found Harold Faradeane alone. He was standing by the window, his clear-cut face and stalwart figure silhouetted against the red light of the setting sun, and he turned as her footsteps fell upon his ear; light as her tread was, he knew it.
They had never been alone together since the night he had brought her home from Bessie’s, and at another time Olivia’s heart would have beaten wildly, and her color would have come at finding herself alone with him; but to-night she was too anxious about the squire to remark it.
His quick eye, which always seemed to dwell upon her face with a grave, guardian kind of watchfulness, noticed that something was amiss instantly.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked, in a low, earnest voice which never failed to find an echo in her heart. “Forgive me, but I thought you looked—worried.”
For a moment she hesitated, and a strong impulse to tell him seized her; but she put it from her, alas!
“Did I?” she said, forcing a smile. “Perhaps I am anxious about the dinner. We have a new cook, you know.”
His eyes rested upon hers—smiling so bravely!—for a moment, then he smiled.
“I cannot fancy you anxious about the dinner,” he said. “Is that all?” and his hand held hers, or, rather, let hers go, slowly and reluctantly. “If there is any other trouble I shall ask you to remember our compact, and tell me.”
She was moving away, but turned her face toward him with a doubting, wistful expression in her lovely eyes. Even then she might have spoken and all her future changed, but her evil genius sent Bartley Bradstone into the room at that moment, and with a bitter smile she turned, thinking:
“If I tell any one it should be—my future husband.”