A lover. How Theodora started and blushed now to be sure!
"No, madame," she answered, and, in a perfect wonder of confusion, dropped her eyes, and was silent.
But the very next instant she raised them again at the sound of the door opening. Somebody was coming in, and it was evidently somebody who felt himself at home, and at liberty to come in as he pleased, and when the fancy took him, for he came unannounced entirely.
Theo found herself guilty of the impropriety of gazing at him wonderingly as he came forward, but Lady Throckmorton did not seem at all surprised.
"I have been expecting you, Denis," she said. "Good-evening! Here is Theodora North. You know I told you about her."
Theo rose from her footstool at once, and stood up tall and straight—a young sultana, the youngest and most innocent-looking of sultanas, in unimperial gray satin. The gentleman was looking at her with a pair of the handsomest eyes she had ever seen in her life.
Then he made a low, ceremonious bow, which had yet a sort of indolence in its very ceremony, and then having done this much, he sat down, as if he was very much at home indeed.
"I thought I would run in on my way to Broome street," he said. "I am obliged to go to Miss Gower's, though I am tired out to-night."
"Obliged!" echoed her ladyship.
"Well—yes," the gentleman answered, with cool negligence. "Obliged in one sense. I have not seen Priscilla for a week."