'Don't go, little girl. Don't go.'
'But I want to go,' replied she. 'And I'm not a little girl. I'm a married lady.'
'Ah! marriage makes us all so old,' said Sir Henry, with a gallant sigh.... 'You're the little girl who reads books, aren't you? I've heard of you. I've written a book or two, but I never read them. I have quite a lot of books upstairs in my room—given me by the authors.... Won't you come to lunch? I feel I could talk to you.'
He had suddenly dropped his mannerisms, his affectation of thinking of a thousand and one things at once, and was a simple and very charming person of no particular age, position, or period—just a human being who wanted for a little to be at his ease. He took Clara by the arm, and, regardless of the staring eyes of those whom they met in the corridors, swept her along to the room which Charles had likened to an aquarium. Then he made her sit in the most comfortable chair, while he bestrode another not a yard away, and stared at her with his extraordinary eyes, which never had one but always the suggestion of a hundred different expressions.
'I love my room,' he said, 'it is the only place I have in the world. Don't you like it?'
'It is very quiet,' said Clara.
Sir Henry rang a bell and ordered lunch to be brought up, vol-au-vents, cold chicken, Crème Caramel, champagne.
'You're not old enough to understand food,' he said. 'That comes with the beginning of wisdom.'
'But I understand food very well,' protested Clara, 'my grandfather knew all there was to know about it.'
'Ah! You are used to old men, eh? Boys don't exist for you, eh?'