"It is three months to-day," he reminded her, "since I saw you first in the gardens of the Embankment."
"What a memory!" she murmured. "And I, like the very forward person you have since discovered me to be, made tentative overtures to you with the object of discovering whether you were a lawyer not too squeamish about your clients or their business."
His face hardened a little.
"Are we coming soon," he asked, "to the end of your stock—or rather your brother's stock of jewels?"
"Why?" she whispered, looking up at him with slightly contracted eyebrows.
"Because I am tired of it," he declared frankly, "tired of it in connection with you, that is to say. I spend whole days, sometimes, in a positive state of terror. Luxury is a small thing compared with freedom and life. You have had over forty thousand pounds now. Why don't you take your grandfather somewhere away into the country? Even if you have to be content with half that sum, you could live on it and be safe. Let your brother go his own way. It isn't really worth while, Henriette."
She looked at the point of her slipper carefully for a moment. She wore a perfectly plain black velvet gown, and only a single pearl hanging from a strip of black velvet around her neck. Her fingers were ringless. Even her hair was arranged in the simplest of coils, yet there was no one else in the room quite like her.
"Henriette," he went on, leaning over her, "if you don't speak I shall make a fool of myself."
She started, and looked timorously into his eyes. Then as quickly she looked away again. Her hands clasped the arms of her chair. She seemed suddenly interested in the orchestra.
"Say—what you were going to say," she begged.