"Tell me," Pauline said, after another silence had somehow made itself felt between them. "Are you a very good friend of this girl—Miss Cora?"
He returned her look then, but with an unwonted vacillation of his own—or so she chose to think.
"Yes," he responded, fluently frank, as it seemed. "We are very good friends—excellent friends, I may say. You will find her quite as charming, in a different way, as her mother. I mean, of course, if you will go with me this evening—or any future evening."
Pauline put forth her hand, and laid it for an instant on his full-moulded arm.
"I will go with you this evening," she said.
V.
Kindelon found Pauline in a very lightsome and animated state of mind when he called at her house that evening. She had a touch of positive excitement in her way of referring to the proposed visit. He thought he had never seen her look more attractive than when she received him, already wrapped in a fleecy white over-garment and drawing on her gloves, while a piquant smile played at the corners of her mouth and a vivacious glitter filled her gray eyes.
"You are here before the carriage," she said to him, "though we shan't have to wait long for that.—Hark—there is the bell, now; my men would not presume to be a minute late this evening. The footman must have detected in my manner a great seriousness when I gave him my order; I felt very serious, I can assure you, as I did so. It meant the first step in a totally new career."
"Upon my word, you look fluttered," said Kindelon, in his mellow, jocose voice.