Mrs. Vandeleur studied the girl's face through her eye-glasses. There was something about it which she did not understand and which she mistrusted. It was not yet the tremulous softness of love she read in the girl's lowered eyes and lips curved into a half-smile; but there was about her a look suggesting that she was secretly happy and amused over some knowledge she did not mean to share with others.
"You cannot love him, Lina," Mrs. Vandeleur reminded her, softly. "You are not free."
"No," Laline repeated—and her half-smile deepened—"I am not free. And now we won't talk about him, will we, dear Mrs. Vandeleur? And I sha'n't write the letter; I shall just stop away."
"Do you wish to go?"
Laline's lips were framing "No," when she stopped.
"I hardly know," she said, after a pause. "But I think I should like to go."
"I shall be strangely disappointed in you, Lina," said Mrs. Vandeleur, coldly, "if you encourage Mr. Armstrong to love you solely for vanity's sake."
The girl knelt down at Mrs. Vandeleur's feet and gazed earnestly up into her face.
"Trust me, dear Mrs. Vandeleur," she said, "for I shall never do that! But—but I heard a good deal about Mr. Armstrong before I came to your house at all, and there is much more about him that I want to find out."
"Does he know that you had any previous acquaintance with him?"