Lee blushed, but Cecil’s letter was safe in her bosom.
“Don’t ask impertinent questions, and see that you don’t talk me to death to-night; I’m tired,” and she ran upstairs.
Her other mail lay on her dressing-table. She opened a letter from Coralie, who was visiting friends in New York.
“Well,” it began abruptly, “I have met your Cecil. It was last night, at a dinner-party at the Forbes’. He is tall, you will be pleased to learn, and I fancy he might look quite athletic and ‘masterful’ (your style) in evening clothes that fitted him. But I believe he has been sporting round the world with a couple of portmanteaux, and avoiding polite society. He wore a suit belonging to Schemmerhorn Smith, whom he is visiting, and it was just two sizes too small. He didn’t seem in the least embarrassed about it, and his manners are quite simple and natural. He doesn’t talk very much, but is a good deal easier to get on with than that awful Lord Arrowmount. At first I was frightfully afraid of him—of course, being the lord of the party, he took in Mrs. Forbes, but I sat on the other side of him, and Mrs. Forbes had a scientific thing on her other side, and had to give him most of her attention. Well, where was I? Scared to death in the memory of those letters—of course I didn’t breathe that I’d read them—but he’s not in the least like them—at all events not at dinner-parties. He was very much interested when I told him I was your intimate friend, although not so much as later—but wait a minute. You may be sure I said everything under Heaven in your praise, but, curiously, I never mentioned your beauty, although I dilated upon your success, and all the scalps you wore at your belt, and that you had a room whose walls were simply covered with german favours. He warmed to the theme as time went on, and said you had always been his greatest chum, and that he was going to California for two things only—to kill a grizzly and see you. He put the grizzly first, but never mind—he’s English. Now comes the point. After dinner, as soon as the men came in, he made for me—I didn’t tell you that I’m sure he’s shy—and I took him straight to your photograph, which is enthroned on a table all by itself.
“‘There she is,’ I said.
“He took it up. ‘Who?’ he asked, staring at it with all his eyes—they are nice honest hazel eyes, by the way, that often laugh, although I’ll bet he has a temper.
“‘Who?—Why, Lee, of course!’
“He stared harder at the picture—it is the low-necked one you had taken here, in black gauze and coloured—then he turned and stared at me. ‘Lee?’ he said. ‘This is Lee?’ and if he were not burnt a beautiful mahogany, I do believe he would have turned pale. He’s got a mouth on him, my dear, that means things, and it trembled.
“‘She’s grown up very pretty,’ he said in a moment, as carelessly as he could manage. ‘I never suspected that she would—that she had. Of course some of your enterprising Americans have snatched her up. I haven’t heard from her for a long time. Is she engaged?’
“‘Not that I know of,’ I said, ‘although she has three or four admirers so persistent, you never know what you may hear any minute.’ I thought a little worry wouldn’t hurt him; he looks altogether too satisfied, as if he had been born to plums, and never had anything else. All he said was ‘Ah!’ He put the picture back, and we went off to the music-room, but he managed to pass that table twice before the evening was over—and I must say, I’ve seen American men manage things more diplomatically. But there’s something rather magnificent about him, all the same. He’s not very entertaining—Randolph would fairly scintillate beside him—but his air of repose and remoteness from the hustling every-day world are really fine. If he had worn a potato sack instead of his almost equally grotesque get-up, he would have looked as unmistakably what he is. I hunted industriously for all his good points to please you, but give me an American every time. I never was intended for a miner, and you have to go into an Englishman’s brain with a pick and shovel. Your Cecil suggests that he’s got a solid mine of real intellect, developed with all the modern improvements, inside his skull; but what’s the good, when you can’t hear the nuggets rattle? He wouldn’t even tell me his adventures—shut up like a clam, and said they were just like any other fellow’s; and Schemmerhorn Smith told me that same evening that the men Lord Maundrell was with said he was one of the crack sportsmen of the day. Do you remember when Tom killed that panther that attacked him in the redwoods? We had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a month. Of course a happy medium’s the thing; but for my part, I don’t like too much modesty. I’m suspicious of it....”