"Certainly, sir!"
Susan was growing quite excited over this little romance. Lorin, on his part, understood something of Mrs. Vandeleur's nature, of her shrewdness, her inquisitiveness, and her love of what Americans call "bossing the show," and being appealed to as an arbiter of fate. There was therefore some subtlety in his note, which ran as follows—
"My dear Mrs. Vandeleur—On my memorable first interview with you not many weeks ago you told me various things about myself that were true, and foretold others that have since come to pass. You were also good enough to express yourself in kind and friendly terms towards me, and to advise me to come to you should I need counsel. At this present moment I am in deep distress and perplexity, and should be most grateful for your advice and help. Will you give them? Hoping fervently that your kindness may move you to do so, I remain,
"Yours very faithfully,
"Wallace Lorin Armstrong."
He had not long to wait for an answer. In a very few seconds Susan tripped down with a gracious message, and showed the visitor into her mistress's study.
How well he remembered, as he entered, his first meeting with Laline, the slim white figure dimly visible in fog and firelight, and the look of fear and astonishment with which she had turned towards him as she dropped the crystal ball at his feet in her alarm at his unexpected entrance. It had all happened so few days ago, and yet it seemed to Lorin that he must always have known Laline, that she must always have been part of his very existence, and that his hopes and aims must ever have centred wholly in her. The room, with its odd accessories, gleaned from Eastern and mediæval art by modern superstition, recalled her image so vividly before his mind that his eyes turned involuntarily to the low seat by the fire, as if expecting that the form of Laline herself would resolve itself from the shadows and rise on his approach.
But the little gray lady with the jewelled fingers and the bird-bright eyes was alone, peering at him out of her long-handled eye-glass set with garnets and turquoise.
"So you have sought me?" she said, extending a small ivory-like hand towards him. "I thought you would! You were rather sceptical, too. But let that pass. Shall I tell you, or will you tell me, what you have come about?"
"As you like," he answered, sinking into the chair she indicated with a wave of her hand.
"You are passionately in love with my beautiful secretary. For that I owe you a very deep grudge. She was just the white-souled, child-hearted creature I wanted for my work, and you have spoiled her. When she came to me her mind was as a clear page; now it is disfigured by an ideal picture of you. Yes—disfigured, to my way of thinking, in spite of your good looks, Mr. Armstrong. If she had remained the passionless white-flower soul she was when she came to me, we might together have completed my two great works in a comparatively short space of time. But now this tiresome, transient love-rubbish has already rendered her self-conscious, capricious, and hysterical, and from the calm, soulful study of the occult, she has fallen to studying only you. What is the result? Lina can't write, she can't think, she has headaches, and cries when she is looked at. That is not the psychic state in which to approach loftier spheres of thought. That is the worst of our sex. Give them the hope of fortune, of distinction, of a career, a calm and elevated sphere of thought, which would raise them above the little aches and pains and vexations of humanity, and what do they do? At the distant vision of a man, it all goes to the winds! All my secretaries have been like that; and I might have guessed that Lina, who is very much the most beautiful, would not escape this craze for the male sex which is a drag upon the spiritual progress of almost every woman between seventeen and fifty. Why could you not have fallen in love with my niece Clare? That would in no way have interfered with my work or my plans. Clare is very handsome, I suppose, although it is not a type that I personally admire. Were I an elderly man, however, I could imagine myself raving about her. You were supposed to be Clare's admirer at first, and had you continued to be so I should have nothing to complain of. Between my niece and me there is nothing in common. She is too mundane, too full-blooded for me. She is like too much sunlight coming glaringly in one's eyes between Venetian blinds—the shock all the cruder because of the pretence of concealment and shade. But Lina—she is far too good to be wasted on a man! Love and marriage take all life and individuality out of ninety-nine of every hundred Englishwomen; and the better the woman, the more like a cow or a cabbage she becomes under domesticity. There—my sermon is ended! Now you can recount your little love-troubles; but don't suppose for a moment that you have happened upon a sympathetic listener!"