'To tell the truth, I meant to see you without your seeing me; but I got interested in a moral victory just obtained by your doorkeeper over an eloquent visitor, and so you caught me.'
Scott glanced at the swaggering Ellmer.
'Drunken brute!' said he, with much disgust. 'His wife—a hard-working little woman, who acts under the name of Miss Bailey—has had to bring her child to the theatre with her to-night, for fear he should get home before her and frighten the poor little thing. Look! here they come. One wonders how a wild beast can be the father of an angel.'
Scott was an ardent worshipper of beauty; but I, a cooler mortal, could not think his raptures excessive when he stood aside to make way for a slim, pale, pretty woman, to whose hand there clung a child so beautiful that my whole heart revolted at the thought that the tipsy ruffian a few paces off was her father. Both mother and child were shabbily dressed, in clothes which gave one the idea that November had overtaken them before they could afford to replace the garments of July. The little one was about eight years old, a slender creature with a flower-like face, round which, from under a home-made red velvet cap, her light-brown hair fell in a naturally curly tangle. Something in her blue eyes reminded me of the childlike charm of Helen's. Scott stopped them to say good-night, effusively addressing the child as his little sweetheart, and telling her that if the boy who gave her an apple last Sunday gave her another the next day, he should find out where he lived and murder that boy.
'Beware, Babiole, of arousing the jealousy of a desperate man,' he ended, folding his arms and tossing back his head.
The child took his outburst quite seriously.
'If he offers me another apple I must take it,' she answered in a sweet demure little voice. 'It would be rude to refuse. But you needn't be angry, for I can like you too.'
'Like me too!' thundered Scott, with melodramatic gestures. 'Heaven and earth! This is how the girl dares to trifle with the fiercest passion that ever surged in a human breast!'
'If you're fierce I shan't like you,' said the little one, in her measured way. 'Papa's fierce, and he frightens me and mamma.'
'Will you like me, little madam?' I ventured; and, knowing that my disfigured face was well concealed, I held out my hand. 'I will love you very gently.'