“It is very dark here,” Ellen said presently.
“Yes, madam; but I have ordered them to turn on the electric light. Will you be seated for a moment, madam?”
Ellen took a chair, and began chatting with the manager about the advantages of the employment of electricity in preference to gas in shops, while Joan, with the cloak still on her shoulders, stood before them in the shadow.
Just then she heard a footstep, the footstep of a lame man who was advancing towards them from the stairs, and the sound set her wondering if Henry had recovered from his lameness. Next moment she was clinging to the back of a chair to save herself from falling headlong to the floor, for the man was speaking.
“Are you here, Ellen?” he said: “it is so infernally dark in this place. Oh! there you are. I met Miss Levinger below, and she told me that I should find you upstairs trying on bodices or something.”
“One does not generally try on bodices in public, Henry. What is the matter?”
“Nothing more than usual, only I have made up my mind to go back to Rosham by the five o’clock train, and thought that I would come to see whether you had any message for my mother.”
“Oh! I understood that you were not going till Wednesday, when you could have escorted us home. No, I have no particular message, beyond my love. You may tell her that I am getting on very well with my trousseau, and that Edward has given me the loveliest bangle.”
“I have to go,” answered Henry: “those confounded farms, as usual,” and he sighed.
“Oh! farms,” said Ellen,—“I am sick of farms. I wish that the art of agriculture had never been invented. Thank goodness”—as the electric light sprang out with a sudden glare—“we can see at last. If you have a minute, stop and give me your opinion of this cloak. Taste is one of your redeeming virtues, you know.”