“Doctor Scales?” she said quickly, as she drew herself up, half-angry, but thoroughly endorsing his words; and then to herself, in the triumph that flushed her as she saw the animation in his eyes and the colour in his checks: “At last he is moved; he never spoke or looked like that before.” Then aloud: “You are really very complimentary, Doctor Scales;” and she gave him a sharp arrow-like glance, that he saw was barbed with contempt.
“Well, yes, Lady Martlett, I suppose I am,” he said; “but it was truly honest, and I will be frank with you. Really, I never come into your presence—I never see you—But no; I ought not to venture to say so much.”
“Why not?” she said, with an arch look. “I am not a silly young girl, but a woman who has seen something of the world.”
“True, yes,” he said, as if encouraged; and Lady Martlett’s bosom rose and fell with the excitement of her expected triumph.
Still he hesitated, and asked himself whether he was misjudging her in his belief that she intended to lead him on to a confession of his love, and then cast him off with scorn and insult; but as he looked at her handsome face and shifting eager eyes, he told himself that there was something mingled with the partiality for him which she might possess, and he became hard as steel.
“Well,” she said, smiling, and that smile had in it a power that nearly brought him to her feet; “you were saying: ‘I never see you’—”
“Exactly. Yes,” he said quickly; “I will say it. You’ll pardon me, I know. I am but a weak man, with an intense love—”
She drew a long breath, and half turned away her head.
“For the better parts of my profession.” Lady Martlett’s face became fixed, and she listened to him intently.
“Yes; I confess I do love my profession, and I never see you in your perfection of womanly beauty, without feeling an intense desire to dissect you.”