“Thank you,” said she, giving him her hand. “You forgive me for being angry just now?”
“The woman who is angry with a man without cause pays him the greatest compliment in her power,” he remarked. “Fate was against us.”
“You think that she is so very—very pretty?” said Miss Craven.
“She?—fate?—I’ll tell you what I think. I think that Harold Wynne has met with the greatest misfortune of his life.”
“If you believe that, I know that I have met with the greatest of my life.”
The corner of the hall was almost wholly in shadow. The settee upon which Mr. Airey and Miss Craven were sitting, was cut off from the rest of the place by the thigh hone of the great skeleton elk. Between the ribs of the creature, however, some rays of light passed from one of the lamps; and, as Mr. Airey looked sympathetically into the face of his companion, he saw the gleam of a tear upon her cheek.
He was deeply impressed—so deeply that some moments had passed before he found himself wondering what she would say next. For a moment he forgot to be on his guard, though if anyone had described the details of a similar scene to him, he would probably have smiled while remarking that when the lamplight gleams upon a tear upon the cheek of a young woman of large experience, is just when a man needs most to be on his guard, He felt in another moment, however, that something was coming.
He waited for it in silence.
It seemed to him in that pause that he was seated by the side of someone whom he had never met before. The girl who was beside him seemed to have nothing in common with Helen Craven. So greatly does a young woman change when she becomes frank.
This is why so many husbands declare—when they are also frank—that the young women whom they marry are in every respect different from the young women who promise to be their wives.