“He’s not coming, my dear, that is clear, so I should advise you to give up hope, and look pleasant,” whispered Mrs. Walker, as she crossed over to her friend with a cup of tea.
But at that moment a cab stopped at the door, and Lady Marion, with a naïve start and a flushing face, betrayed her hopes. A minute later Rees was in the room.
If Lady Marion was annoyed at the presence of Mrs. Walker, her admirer was unspeakably relieved by it. He drank cup after cup of tea, and bore lightly the chief burden of the conversation, delighted to shorten the inevitable tête-à-tête in which he would have to forswear his liberty and be surfeited with unwelcome caresses. At last, however, the hostess proposed to show her own admirer a picture her husband had just bought, in order to allow the supposed passionate lovers an opportunity of exchanging mutual vows. The two drawing-rooms, which were both furnished with a good taste which seemed at first sight a surprising characteristic of their occupier, ran from the front to the back of the house, and were divided simply by a reed curtain. Mrs. Walker passed through these with Francis Cenarth, and Rees was left to make his proposal. As usual, having let Amos make up his mind for him, Rees was not long in carrying out his instructions when once he and the opportunity stood face to face.
The reed curtain had scarcely ceased to rustle behind his hostess and her companion, when he threw himself into a chair by Lady Marion’s side.
“Well, Marion,” he said in a rather languid, pretty-pretty manner, “have you any idea why I was so anxious to see you to-night?”
The poor girl flushed with surprise and agitation. Indeed, she had not noticed any great degree of anxiety in her lover’s manner. Knowing her own personal disadvantages, with a cankering knowledge that she was lean, high-shouldered, awkward, and altogether without beauty, and regarding Rees with worshipful eyes which even exaggerated his good looks and attractions, she had always been content with very little. Now, therefore, she scarcely dared to think that the goal of her hopes was really reached.
“No, Rees,” she stammered, looking at him with sudden, most eloquent shyness, and a bright gleam of excitement in her rather dull blue eyes, “I—I didn’t know that you had any particular reason.”
“And if I tell you that I have, can you guess what it is?”
“No—no, Rees.”
She had scarcely uttered these words when a cab drew up so sharply outside that, in the fog, the horse stepped upon the curbstone, and was got off amid much shouting and clatter. Rees jumped up and looked out from behind the blind to see what had happened. He stepped back muttering an exclamation, with a strange look in his eyes.