Patience withdrew her hand abruptly. Her face wore its accustomed cold gravity, contradicted by the eager eyes of youth. “Won’t you sit down? I hope Hal has missed me, but she has hardly had time to tell you so.”
“Hasn’t she? She has had several hours, and I suppose you know by this time how fast she can talk. She’s awfully bright, don’t you think so?”
“Indeed she is.”
“She isn’t a beauty like May, nor intellectual like Honora, but you can’t have everything—that is, everybody can’t.”
“Does any one?” asked Patience, indifferently.
“Hal says you are the cleverest woman she has ever met,—and—”
“I’m afraid Hal is carried away by the enthusiasms of the moment,” said Patience, as he paused. She was highly gratified, nevertheless.
“—you are the prettiest woman I ever saw,” he continued, as if she had not spoken.
“Oh, nonsense!” exclaimed Patience, angrily, but the colour flew to her face.
“I mean it,” and indisputably his eyes spoke admiration. “I’ve thought of no one else since I was here. I haven’t come before, because there’s nothing in calling on your sister, and that’s what it would have amounted to. But, you see, I’m here the very night she left.”