Volume Two—Chapter Two.
Grit in the Wheel.
“You are precious quiet, Harry,” said Lionel, as they strolled on till they reached Trafalgar Square, almost without a word having been spoken.
“I was only thinking,” was the reply, and then they walked on again in silence; for Harry Clayton was indeed thinking, deeply too, of his position. There was a vague sense of danger, of disappointment, troubling him. One moment he felt ready to hurry back to the wretched street, and beg Patty to grant him an interview; the next he shrank from it, and asked himself how he could expect her, if she had any proper sense of pride, to listen to him again. Now, too, came a growing feeling of dislike to Lionel. He told himself that life with him would now be insupportable, and he fell to wondering again what the young man had seen. Would he jeer and banter him, and torture him by endeavouring to excite jealousy? However, he felt that he must let matters take their course.
How his thoughts ran riot, though! From time to time the busy traffic of the London streets faded from before his eyes, for a bright little vision to occupy the place—always a fair young face bent towards a dove, the startled look of confusion, and then the subsequent scene.
It was nothing new that it would come—that face; try as he would to drive it from him, there it was again and again, soft, gentle, and pleasing. He told himself that it was absurd; that he had seen in different society hundreds of sweeter faces, but no one had ever so impressed him before.
“Could she have been acting?” he muttered; “but what a place, and what associations!”
He could not have analysed his thoughts had he tried, for they were strangely mingled, and involuntarily he gazed uneasily from time to time at the careless frank-looking young fellow at his side, apparently now too much occupied with his dog to heed aught beside.