“A carboy!” Gordon raised his head. “What does he want?”
“He says he has a message for your lordship’s own hands. He’s a likely-looking lad.”
“Very well, show him in. Hasn’t Rushton returned from Mr. Sheridan’s yet?” he added.
“Yes, my lord. But Lady Noël sent him out again with a letter for Sir Ralph to his club.”
Gordon heaved a sigh of relief. “Sherry must be better,” he thought. He waited on the threshold till Fletcher ushered in a slim figure in the round coat and buttons of a carman. His chin was muffled in a coarse neckerchief, and a rumpled mass of brown hair showed beneath the edges of the cloth cap whose visor was pulled over his eyes.
“Well, my lad?”
The boy stood still, twisting his fingers in his jacket till the valet had retired. Then suddenly as the door closed, the cap was snatched off, a mass of brown hair dropped curling about the boyish shoulders—the silver-buttoned jacket fell open, revealing a softly rounded throat and delicate slope of breast. Gordon uttered an astonished and bewildered exclamation:
“Caro! What mad masquerade is this?”
She drew back under the pale intensity, the controlled agitation of his face. “Forgive me! forgive me!” Tumult was looking from her eyes, and her shoulders were heaving. “I could not help it! I have tried to forget you during all this past year. I cannot bear to see you only at Melbourne House and at parties and on the street. How pale you always are!” she went on. “Like a statue of marble, and your dark hair such a contrast. I never see you without wanting to cry. If any painter could paint me your face as it is, I would give anything I possess!”
She had touched his hand, but he drew it away sharply, feeling a black sense of entanglement in the touch.