“You must go away, Lorry,” he said, using Hal’s pet name; “you are beginning to look thoroughly ill.”
“I don’t feel well, but I haven’t the heart to go alone. I should only get melancholia.”
“Hal seemed to think I ought to offer you a little companionship.” He said it with a slightly bashful air.
“Hal?…” in a sharp, questioning voice. “What has Hal been saying to you?”
“Not much. She was in great form at the Bruces’ last night. She rubbed it into me finely on various subjects, and finally went off with her head in the air to find some one refreshingly ugly who could talk sense.”
They both laughed, but Lorraine’s eyes were thoughtful.
“And what did she say about your companionship?”
“Oh, that it was only some one to talk to and be company you wanted if you went away, and that I seemed to fill the post better than any one just now.” He paused, then added: “Do I?”
She felt him looking hard into her face, and kept her eyes lowered. She did not want him to know that the thought of his companionship in the country was like the straw to the drowning man—the last joy to the condemned one.
“You always make me forget the years, and feel young,” she said slowly and thoughtfully, “and I dare say that is a very good tonic in itself.”