“Ah! I knew you would say that.” He added in a moment, “You are the only person that has quoted my lines to me that has not embarrassed me painfully. For the moment I felt that you had written them, not I!”
“I often used to feel that I had; all, that is——” The magnet of danger to the curiosity in her feminine soul was irresistible. “All but your ode to the mate whom you never could find.”
And then she turned cold, for she remembered the story of the woman who had been his ruin. But he did not pale nor shrink; he merely smiled and his eyes seemed to withdraw still farther away. “Ah! that woman of whom all poets dream. Perhaps we really find her as we invoke her for a bit with the pen.” Then he broke off abruptly and looked hard at her, his eyes no longer absent. “You—you——” he began. “Ten years ago——” And then his face flushed so darkly that Anne laughed gaily to cover the cold and horror that gripped her once more.
“Ten years ago? I was only twelve! And now—I am made to feel every day that two-and-twenty is quite old. In three more years I shall be an orthodox old maid. All the women in Bath House intimate that I am already beyond the marriageable age.”
“The men do not, I fancy!” The poet spoke with the energy of a man himself. “Besides, I looked—happened to look—through the window of the saloon one night and saw you talking to no less than four gallants.”
Here she turned away in insufferable confusion, and he, too, seemed to realise that he had betrayed a deeper interest than he had intended. With a muttered au revoir he left her, and when she finally turned her head he was gone. Miss Bargarny was exclaiming:
“Well, dear Lady Hunsdon, he was quite delightful, genteel, altogether the gentleman. Thank heaven I never heard all those naughty stories, so I can admire without stint. Did you notice, Mary, how pleased he was when I recited that couplet?”
“I saw that he was very much embarrassed,” replied Lady Mary, who for an elegiac figure had a surprising reserve of human nature. “It was too soon to be personal with a poor man who has been out of the world so long. But I think he enjoyed himself after the first embarrassment wore off. I feel surer still,” with an exalted expression turned suddenly upon Lord Hunsdon, “that we shall rescue him. We must have him here often, not lose a day of this precious time. Then we can leave Nevis without anxiety, or perhaps induce him to go with us.” She reflected that were she mistress of Hunsdon Towers she should be quite willing to give the famous poet a turret and pass as his mundane redeemer.
Hunsdon moved toward her as if her enthusiasm were a magnet. “It has all exceeded my fondest hopes,” he exclaimed. “He was quite like his old self before he left——”