“Our poet in the cottage; don’t you remember?”
“Ah, the morbid young man. Poor fellow!”
Isabel suppressed a low laugh.
“Come, Rhoda dear, it’s cold,” she said to the girl, who had drawn a little apart.
Rhoda followed in silence, her head bent. In the hall she took her candle, and bade the two a hasty good-night.
“Why is she crying?” asked Robert, under his voice, as he entered the drawing-room again with Isabel.
The latter shook her head, but did not speak. She moved about the room for a moment; the shawl had half slipped from her shoulders, and made a graceful draping. Asquith stood watching her.
She approached him.
“I half hinted,” she began, “that I had a selfish object in asking you to come here. We are good friends, are we not?—old and good friends?”
There was a beautiful appeal upon her face, anxiety blending with a slight embarrassment. She had put aside the mask of light-heartedness, and that which it had all day been in her countenance to utter freely exposed itself. It was not so much as distress; rather, impatience of some besieging annoyance. She was more beautiful now than when Robert had read her face seventeen years ago. Still, he regarded her with his wonted smile. There was much kindness in his look; nothing more than kindness.