“The Guirs!” said Paul, still unheedful.
Suddenly he looked up, and the expression on the girl's face startled him.
“Are you ill?” he cried. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No, no,” she gasped. “It is nothing. I am nervous. I am always nervous in the morning, and you gave me quite a turn. There now, I shall feel better directly.”
If Paul was astonished before, he was dumfounded now. He could not imagine how anything he had said could produce such an effect, but he watched the return of color to the girl's face with satisfaction. Presently she looked up at him with a smile and said:
“It is all right now, but you must excuse me for a minute. I shall be back immediately.”
She got up and left the room, leaving Paul alone. His appetite had quite departed, so he turned his chair around and looked out of the window at the boxwood bushes and the trees beyond. Not a human figure was in sight, nor was there a sound to indicate that there were living creatures about the premises. Where was the family? Surely such a large house could not be occupied solely by the few individuals he had already met. If there were other members, where had they kept themselves? He would have given the world to have asked a few straightforward questions, but there seemed no opportunity to do so. Where was Ah Ben? Even he had not shown his face at the breakfast table. A painful sense of mystery was growing more oppressive each hour, which the bright morning sunlight had not dispelled, as he had hoped it would. If this feeling had confined itself to Ah Ben and the house, Paul thought he might have shaken off the gloom while in the company of the girl, but even she was subject to such extraordinary flights of eccentricity, such sudden fits of nervous depression, that he felt she was not surely to be depended on as a solace to his troubled soul. While he was meditating, the door opened, and Dorothy returned. She was full of smiles; and the color had come back to her cheeks.
“I can't imagine how I could have given you such a turn,” said Paul apologetically, as he resumed his place at the table.
“It was altogether my fault,” she answered. Then looking at him very earnestly, added:
“I hope, Mr. Henley, that you may never become an outcast, as I am. I hope your people will never disown you. But let us talk of something else.”