was uttered with regretful longing rather than peremptory harshness, great love for her was revealed beneath the stern language, and his last wild embrace was full of a man’s passionate agony in parting from all that made life worth living to him.
The girl sat as one entranced, drinking in every word, not letting a single gesture escape her keen scrutiny.
Her eyes flashed responsively, her breath came in gasps, she was deaf and blind to her surroundings.
Once or twice Keene himself glanced up at the beautiful sympathetic face, and his own eyes glowed with quiet triumph.
CHAPTER III.
“My dear, Mr. Keene was perfectly right to advise you as he did. A man of the world’s advice may always be taken in matters of this sort; and a girl who lives alone is always open to criticism, you know, even if she have no relations.”
“I am singularly fortunate in my friends,” the girl said, with a bright smile. “Mr. Gascoigne says I was born under a lucky star.”
“In meeting Mr. Keene you were undoubtedly,” Mrs. Carroll said, with a swift look at the tall, graceful figure bending over the escretoire; “but if you knew how many failures Mr. Carroll and I have had in trying to get a lady secretary, you would say that we were the lucky people. There seemed to be no chance of finding what we wanted. If a girl were clever, she was vulgar or self-assertive; if lady-like, utterly stupid, or worse still,”—laughing—“weak and incapable of holding an opinion. Perhaps the most objectionable type was the girl of the period—masculine, irrepressible, and in fact——”
“Full of bounce,” added Mr. Carroll, laughing and looking up from the Times; “like Miss Morton, who dictated to me instead of taking down my ideas. I assure you, Miss Winstanley, that she argued about every chapter in ‘Young Calderon’s Career,’ until I suggested that she should write a novel herself and leave me to my own little sphere.”
“I wish that I knew shorthand,” Muriel said, presently, getting paper and pens ready; “it would be so much quicker for you.”