“I know I am disturbing you,” said he, after the usual greetings. “I see that you are writing, so I will not stay but a moment. I have come, you know, after that little book.”
“Indeed, you are not disturbing me at all. I have been trying to continue a letter which I began to my brother a month ago. There is no hurry about it.”
“And how is Paolo?”
“I have not heard for some time. I ought to hear soon. He went to America last summer, and I have not had a word from him since. My letter is of no importance, I assure you, and now, since you are here, you shall not go. Indeed, I only touched it a minute ago. I have been looking at some pictures till I am so begrimed and inundated with dust that I feel as though I had been resolved into my original element.”
And she held up her hands with a pretty gesture of horror.
Despard looked at her for a moment as she stood in her bright beauty before him. A sudden expression of pain flashed over his face, succeeded by his usual smile.
“Dust never before took so fair a form,” he said, and sat down, looking on the floor.
“For unfailing power of compliment, for an unending supply of neat and pretty speeches, commend me to the Rev. Courtenay Despard.”
“Yet, singularly enough, no one else ever dreamed that of me.”
“You were always so.”