"Why, dear child, should you have such a feeling when a man of innate nobility, who knew you when you were a little girl——"
"It is wrong, I know," put in Louise, hastily. "But I find it so hard to regard him as—as just a lawyer, you know, Laura. He is not like a lawyer at all—at least I have not found him so. He is——"
Laura pointed a teasing finger at her, which caused the color to reappear on Louise's face.
"Don't try to tell me what he is, Louise," said Laura, smiling. "Don't you suppose I know? But you don't know how intensely glad I am to hear that you can't regard Mr. Blythe as—as 'just a lawyer.' I shall tell him that you are going about criticizing his professional ability."
"Don't do that—please!" said Louise in such an obvious panic that Laura pinched her cheek reassuringly.
The meetings with Blythe to which Louise referred were casual ones in Laura's apartment. Blythe was in the habit of dropping in occasionally for coffee—he abominated tea—and a chat at Laura's tea hour in the late afternoon; and Laura duly noted, not without slyly chaffing him over it, that he had made this an almost daily habit since his discovery that he stood a pretty fair gambling chance of finding Louise there almost any afternoon. Once, when Laura and Louise came in from a drive which had been prolonged rather later than usual, they entered the library quietly, to find Blythe, looking decidedly glum, browsing among the books without the least seeming of being interested in any of them, for his hands were thrust deep into his pockets and they caught him yawning most deplorably. But at sight of the two women—one woman, Laura said, accusingly, to him after Louise had gone home in Laura's car—he had brightened so suddenly and visibly that Laura had to profess that her rippling laugh was occasioned by something she had seen during her drive.
On these occasions Laura had found it imperatively necessary to leave them together in order to confer with her servants. Louise and Blythe had talked easily on detached, somewhat light matters, finding an agreeable mutual plane without effort. Louise, remembering his somewhat sober preoccupation on the train, had been surprised and pleased—though she could not have told why—to note his possession of a rather unusual social charm. She was pleased, too, that, except in the matter of a remarkable physique, he was not to be rated as a handsome man. His features were too rugged for that. Strength, keenness and kindliness shone from his masterful countenance; but he was anything but handsome judged from the magazine-cover standard. Louise had amused Laura one day by saying that she found Blythe's face "restful." She had not the least partiality for men of the generally-accepted straightout handsome type of features; she was, in truth, a little inclined to be contemptuous of an excessive facial pulchritude in men. But—again for a reason which she could scarcely have explained—she was glad that Blythe was perhaps two inches more than six feet in height, that he was as straight as a lance, and that he found it necessary to walk sidewise in order to get his shoulders through some of Laura's lesser doors.
On her last meeting with Blythe Louise had asked him, with a certain hesitancy which he noticed, if he had written to her father.
"Yes," Blythe had replied, simply, "and I sent him your love." He had not offered to become more communicative; and Louise, concluding that his reticence on the subject might be based on a considerateness for her which it might be unfair for her to seek to fathom, did not mention the matter to him again. She had an oddly resolute confidence in him, considering how short the time had been since he had come into her life; and she felt that, if he now exhibited a taciturnity which puzzled her, it would be explained in due time.
Louise Treharne belonged to that rare (and therefore radiant) type of women who know how to wait.