“Not expect me! Did you not know I was in Radnor?”
“Oh! yes,” laughing a little for she was beginning to recover herself, “but the two are not synonymous.”
“You are jesting, Mademoiselle. Surely you know—you must know that only one thing would bring me to this country as soon as I came out of the wilderness.” There was a world of meaning in his eyes, but Julie chose to ignore it.
“Your friendship with Mr. Renshawe has been of long standing, has it not?” she asked evasively.
“Oh! Mademoiselle Julie, it was not Renshawe—do not hold me aloof—have you forgotten the dear old California days?”
“One might have been led to suppose you had,” she said quietly, “you disappeared so suddenly and—”
“But I wrote,” he interrupted, “and though you never replied I meant always to return when I had accomplished something. Did you not feel that instinctively, Mademoiselle? Many things have happened to me since then and to you, also, your guardian said.”
“My guardian?” she repeated. “Do you mean Dr. Ware?”
“He gave me permission to call and said you might have many things to say to me,” looking at her rather perplexedly. “Will you tell me all about it, Mademoiselle?”
“Tell you,” she cried springing up and confronting him, “tell you as if it were a book I were reading all the sorrow and wretchedness and misery of these past eight months! No, a thousand times no! It would not interest you!” She threw back her head defiantly. “Why,” she demanded fiercely, “did you find us out? We have no part in the world to which you belong! Could you not know that to see you would bring back the past, intensify the contrast between then and now—hurt us like the thrust of a sword? Oh! how could you come?”