I hurried away to change. Though I dressed as speedily as possible, the dinner had begun when I entered the dining-room. As I noticed that Lovelace was bending low over the table at which Miss Langdon sat, and that she was speaking to him with some vehemence, I approached them very slowly and deliberately; even so, their conversation was not finished when I had sat down at my place.
“ ...And what happened to Walter had nothing to do with me,” she protested, though she knew I was present; “and if it had—what then? Am I to love all the men who love me? Are men children that they require nurses?”
“No, Madame,” he said. “Will Madame take thick or clear soup?”
“I will take no soup at all. Write down your answer on a piece of paper and bring it with the entrée.”
He departed, white and trembling, and for a minute my sympathy was entirely with him.
“What surprises me,” I said to her, “is that you asked me always to sit at your table.”
Though a minute previously she had been speaking passionately, almost angrily, to Lovelace, she now turned to me a face at once gentle and beseeching.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
“Well—no. To be perfectly frank, you do make me feel a little uncomfortable. Lovelace is a gentleman. Even if he weren’t, I shouldn’t like to interrupt your private conversations with him.”
“But you don’t,” she protested.