She left the room. Her father had not followed us. I sat down on the sofa, and began turning over a pretty book bound in red silk, one of the first of the annual tribe, which lay on the table. I was deep in one of its eastern stories when, hearing a slight movement, I looked up, and there sat Clara in a low chair by the window, working at a delicate bit of lace with a needle. She looked somehow as if she had been there an hour at least. I laid down the book with some exclamation.
‘What is the matter, Mr Cumbermede?’ she asked, with the slightest possible glance up from the fine meshes of her work.
‘I had not the slightest idea you were in the room.’
‘Of course not. How could a literary man, with a Forget-me-not in his hand, be expected to know that a girl had come into the room?’
‘Have you been at school all this time?’ I asked, for the sake of avoiding a silence.
‘All what time?’
‘Say, since we parted in Switzerland.’
‘Not quite. I have been staying with an aunt for nearly a year. Have you been at college all this time?’
‘At school and college. When did you come home?’
‘This is not my home, but I came here yesterday.’