WHO IS MR. SABIN?
Mrs. Thorpe-Satchell was not at home to ordinary callers. Nevertheless when a discreet servant brought her Mr. Francis Densham’s card she gave orders for his admittance without hesitation.
That he was a privileged person it was easy to see. Mrs. Satchell received him with the most charming of smiles.
“My dear Francis,” she exclaimed, “I do hope that you have lost that wretched headache! You looked perfectly miserable last night. I was so sorry for you.”
Densham drew an easy chair to her side and accepted a cup of tea.
“I am quite well again,” he said. “It was very bad indeed for a little time, but it did not last long. Still I felt that it made me so utterly stupid that I was half afraid you would have written me off your visitors’ list altogether as a dull person. I was immensely relieved to be told that you were at home.”
Mrs. Thorpe-Satchell laughed gaily. She was a bright, blonde little woman with an exquisite figure and piquante face. She had a husband whom no one knew, and gave excellent parties to which every one went. In her way she was something of a celebrity. She and Densham had known each other for many years.
“I am not sure,” she said, “that you did not deserve it; but then, you see, you are too old a friend to be so summarily dealt with.”
She raised her blue eyes to his and dropped them, smiling softly.
Densham looked steadily away into the fire, wondering how to broach the subject which had so suddenly taken the foremost place in his thoughts. He had not come to make even the idlest of love this afternoon. The time when he had been content to do so seemed very far away just now. Somehow this dainty little woman with her Watteau-like grace and delicate mannerisms had, for the present, at any rate, lost all her attractiveness for him, and he was able to meet the flash of her bright eyes and feel the touch of her soft fingers without any corresponding thrill.