"I have never seen as much of her as I should have liked, but I've always thought of her as a most splendid person, whom I should like to know much better. But it's never too late to mend, eh?"
He laughed, in jerks.
Lily seldom felt at ease with Nicholas Aubray when he was amused, although she forced her own smiles, in sympathy with the child-like appeal of the gaze that he was fixing directly upon her.
He grew grave again suddenly, after his wont.
"What about you? Am I to say good-bye to my little pal without anything to look forward to?"
Lily's heart beat with excitement and a sense of flattery, but she also felt overwhelmingly embarrassed, and quite unable to summon up the warm reply with which she would have liked to please him.
"I wonder whether you ever write letters?" said Nicholas, when he had waited in silence for some time.
"I haven't got many people to write to."
"You've got your pal—your old, ancient pal, who perhaps seems to you almost in his dotage——"
He broke off anxiously, and this time Lily's quick perception of his unspoken need of reassurance came to her help.