“I’m so glad!” I answered, feeling unreasonably delighted. “I’m sure that I like you,” I added fervently.
“It’s very good of you to say so, when you’ve only just seen me,” she remarked; “but you can’t be quite sure. You don’t know anything about me, you see. I might be dreadfully disagreeable.”
“But I’m sure you’re not,” I answered, feeling that I was getting on.
She was good enough to seem pleased at my confidence; but she made no further remark for a minute or two, during which I racked my brains in vain for some effective remark, with my eyes fixed upon her. She certainly made a very charming picture, curled up in the great black oak chair, with the firelight playing upon her ruddy golden hair and glistening in her bright eyes.
“You’ve been reading, haven’t you?” I asked, pointing to the book which lay in her lap.
“It’s not a nice book at all!” she said decidedly. “I don’t like any of the books here. Oh!”
I turned round quickly, for I saw that she was looking behind me. Standing on the threshold of his inner room was the tall, dark figure of Mr. Ravenor, handsomer than ever, it seemed to me, in his plain evening dress.
Slowly he advanced out of the shadows, with a faint smile upon his pale face, and laid his hand upon her shoulder, looking first at my little hostess and then at me.
“So you’ve been entertaining one of my guests for me, Trixie, have you?” he said. “Rather late for you to be up, isn’t it? Your nurse has been looking for you everywhere.”
“Then I suppose I must go,” Lady Beatrice Cecilia remarked deliberately. She rose, shook her hair out, and, replacing the book which she had been reading upon the shelf, prepared to depart. But first she came up to where I was standing on the hearthrug and held out her little white hand.