"Angry?" said Andrew. "Why should I be? I'm surprised, perhaps: I wasn't expecting you. But angry?—no, certainly not. I'm very pleased."
But, for the moment, there was no conviction in his tone. Her coming smote him with a vague uneasiness. It was something new, this—something for which he found himself wholly unprepared. He seemed to divine that a significant development was imminent, and that, in some sense not fully clear, his threshold was a Rubicon—which she had crossed!
In the antichambre Monsieur Vicot was scribbling his master's name and his own initials in the receipt-book of a little, domino-shaped messenger-boy. Then, as young Mercury went whistling down the stairs, he turned the blue missive over and over in his fingers.
"I'll be damned if Radwalader sees it!" he ejaculated, and thrust it in his pocket, where, for a vitally important period, it remained—forgotten!
CHAPTER XIII.
RHAPSODIE HONGROISE, NO. 2.
"It was a whim, if you like," said Mirabelle, a little unevenly, as she stripped off her gloves. "I hadn't seen you for four whole days, except for that little glimpse at St. Germain, and I was tired, cross, and a little lonely. So I took the chance of your being back and of finding you alone and disengaged. Perhaps, if you've nothing to do, you will let me stay to breakfast. I told Pierre that I would send down word if he was not to wait. Will you ask your man to say so?"