“Mrs. Ashley, I am very happy to see you again.”
She essays to speak, but fails, and her self-possession utterly deserts her. The hand he has taken is cold as ice—he carries it to his lips.
“My dearest India, I am so happy to find you again, after all these years.”
“All these years!”—she repeats his words, mechanically, as she sinks back in her chair.
He takes the nearest seat, and resumes—“I have sought you far and wide, I have sought you for so long, I have done all but advertise you!” He added, smiling—“Why have you hidden yourself so long from all your friends?”
“The old ‘sinful pride’ perhaps, Mark,” she answered, half smiling in her turn.
“‘Pride,’ dear India? Ah! I understand you. Yet that same pride, in all its phases, has caused much vexation to those who love you, dear India.”
“Do I not know it? And do I not regret it?”
“And to none has it caused more trouble than to myself.”—But the conversation is growing personal, and closing in.
You and I, reader, are de trop—and will withdraw from the scene and wait.