Clare eyed her curiously under half-lowered white eyelids, and began taking the hairpins out of her hair.
"Of course I should!" she answered, after a slight pause. "But he didn't. Then I went to the South Kensington Museum constantly on nearly all the free days for more than a month, until I knew all the cases near the entrances by heart. But I never met him, and I began really to despair until to-night."
"And were you introduced to him?" asked Laline, much interested. Her notions of what was right and becoming in a young gentlewoman had been considerably startled by Clare's confessions; but she was a sympathetic listener all the same.
"As soon as I walked into the room I saw him," replied Clare, triumphantly. "He was watching me all the while I was shaking hands with Lady Moreham; and only a few moments after I could feel rather than see that he was being brought up to be introduced by Miss Moreham, who was helping her mother to receive. He had asked to be introduced to me, as I knew he would. And fancy! I had supposed all the time that he was only an artist, but I learned that he is in a very good position, and will have heaps of money some day. Isn't that delightful?"
"Why?"
"Why? Because I adore him! His eyes are perfectly lovely—they sparkle like blue stars! And he has a trick of listening very attentively when one is talking, and just drawing his black eyebrows together while he stares hard at one's face, which is irresistible!"
"And is he in love with you?"
"Of course he is! He fell in love with me the first moment he saw me."
"Did he tell you so?"