“I don’t know,—I have a headache,—there can’t be any hurry.”
The indifference of the tone struck him, but it was too much an echo of his own feeling to seem as if it were anything strange.
“Then I will speak to him?” he said.
“Very well,” said Ada, turning away with tears in her eyes.
“Is there nothing I can do for you?” said Anthony, still touched with the feeling that it was bodily suffering she was experiencing.
“No,—nothing. I can’t talk. There is a ring, who is it?”
“I think I hear Warren’s voice.”
He did not expect to see her jump up, and turn with a smiling face to greet the new-comer. Not a trace of her languor remained; she talked, laughed, and congratulated, all in a breath. “What does it mean?” thought Anthony, looking at her sparkling eyes in wonder. Sniff had stolen in unperceived behind Mr Warren, and crept under his master’s chair; but seeing his hand hanging down could not, even at the risk of detection, refrain from a rapturous lick. Anthony got the dog’s head in his hand and fondled it, while he sat and wondered mutely.
“And you are really going away?” Ada was saying. “We shall all miss you so much.”
“You may be certain I shall come back again.”