How her heart beat as she repeated those two words.
"One thing! What is it?"
"Why, that love, or something else, has quite changed Lord Charles Vivianne. He used to be gay, good-humored, slightly cynical; now he is gloomy, sullen, and bad-tempered. I heard a friend of his say that he seemed to be always looking for some one."
The beautiful face, in spite of all her efforts, grew paler.
"Looking for some one! What a strange idea!" she said.
"Perhaps the lady refused him, and he wants to be revenged. Perhaps she jilted him, and he is looking for her," laughed Lord Charter, little dreaming how near he was to the truth.
If it had been to save her life, she could not have uttered another word. Lord Charter went on to relate some brilliant anecdotes of people he knew, and she affected to be engrossed in them, although she did not know one word that he was saying. Then, when he paused, she said:
"It is a strange world, this London; it seems to me full of hidden romances."
"You will say so when you have been here for a few years longer," he replied. "I have seen far stranger romances in the lives of my own friends and acquaintances than I have ever read in books."
She was mistress of herself now; the first deadly pain of fear had passed; her heart had ceased to beat so quickly; the color came back to her lips and face. She wished to make a good impression on this Lord Charter, so that if he spoke of her to her former lover, he could praise her simplicity, her innocence, her ignorance of the world and its evil ways. That would be altogether unlike the cynical, worldly Doris he had known.