“Oh,” said the count, and his dark eyes turned from her face, which had become very red.
“He’s going to marry me some day. He’s just Jack Latimer, the stenographer in the office. But I like him, and that’s all there is to it. But mommer’s terribly set on you. And she’s so determined. Oh, Count de Lamolle, it’s very hard to make determined people see things differently to what they want. So please, don’t want to marry me any more, for if you don’t want to, that will have to end it.”
She stopped, her lips trembling. The count took her hand, cold and clammy, and lifting it pressed his lips lightly on the back. Then, dropping it, he said, quietly:
“All is understood. You have honored me highly, Mademoiselle, by giving me your confidence.”
They stood silent for a moment. The kiss on her hand, the something friendly and kind—so different from the cold looks of unadmiring criticism she was accustomed to—in the man’s eyes brought her uncomfortably close to tears. Few people had been kind to Maud Shackleton in the midst of her riches and splendor.
The count saw her emotion and turned toward the fire. He felt more drawn to her than he had ever been during his courtship. From the tail of his eye he saw her little handkerchief whisk out and then into her pocket. As it disappeared he said:
“I see, Miss Shackleton, that you have some albums of views on the table. Might we not look at them together?”
Thus it was that Bessie and Essex found them. They had worked through two volumes of Northern Italy, and were in Switzerland. And over the stiffened pages with their photographs, not one-half of which Maud could remember though she had been to all the places on her trip abroad, they had come nearer being friends than ever before.
CHAPTER XX
THE WOMAN TALKS
“My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned; then I spake with my tongue.”—Psalms.