"For old friendship's sake—could I do less?"
She flushed and said hurriedly.
"My father will know how to thank you properly. When I see him——" and she unburdened her heart to the Secretary, who gave her a willing ear. Together they discussed her plans for the future, her return home, her welcome; in short, a thousand and one pleasant anticipations, till Stanley declared, regretfully, that he must go.
"But you have stood already an hour," she murmured, "surely you will come in and rest."
"An hour!" he exclaimed, looking at his watch. "Impossible!"
"No," she said. "Not impossible, I also have stood."
He was overcome at his thoughtlessness, but she silenced his excuses by throwing open the gate and saying:
"Come." And he entered.
Miss Fitzgerald was seated at her ease in a West Indian chair on the lawn. A white parasol shielded her from the sun, and a novel lay unopened in her lap. As she leaned back looking up into the earnest face of a man, with a supercilious smile and a veiled fire in her blue eyes, she seemed to be at peace with herself and with the world. In reality, she was enduring the last of three most disagreeable encounters.