He sighed.
“A little fatherly, eh?” he said, the smile returning. And he wondered whether she would ever learn to her distress how cruelly youth can hurt. “Well, I’m not young. I’m forty-two. I want you to accustom yourself to that knowledge before I come again. When I come again I shall have another lesson to teach you.”
He spoke lightly; and with the lessening of his earnestness and the removal of his hand, both of which Prudence had found embarrassing, she felt relieved and was able to smile back at him with something of the old frankness.
“If you teach then as kindly as you have to-day,” she said, “I shall prove a dull pupil if I do not learn it readily.”
“You give me hope,” he said.
He scrutinised her for a moment very closely, made as though he would speak, surprised a startled apprehension in her eyes which nearly resembled fear, and thought better of it. He got up rather suddenly and walked to the fireplace and stood staring unseeingly into the empty grate.
“I’ll be patient,” he said. “Perhaps you will have prepared your mind a little to receive that lesson by the time I return.”