"Mr. Trevelyan? Why, a moment ago you called me plain Audley, and it did sound so delightful! Pray do not let us go back in our relations. And you have quite recovered, I hope, from the effects of that frightful affair?" he added, while smiling with fondness into the clear bright eyes that drooped beneath his gaze.
"It seems as nothing, now—save when I dream; you make too much of it—indeed you do," blundered Sybil.
"Can I do so of aught in which you have a part?"
"Poor mamma is still in a weak and nervous state; so, I am sorry to say, she will be unable to see you."
As it was not "mamma" he had come exactly to visit, Audley could only murmur some well-bred expression of regret.
"How very remarkable that you should have been there to save me!" said Sybil, after a pause.
"The coldly treated stranger by the moorland tarn, eh?"
"You forget that we had not been introduced, or how came it all to pass?" she asked, with growing confusion.
"As all things in this life do, dearest Sybil."
"But how?"