‘Like a banker on his holiday, or a lady of independent means, or some other equally enviable person,’ said Sara.
‘You will own that the position for you is an anomaly, at least.’
‘I suppose it is. I cannot paint to-day. I have other things to think of.’ Her face clouded. ‘I am going to lose my dear little companion.’
She told him this as a fact, though she had been debating within herself whether to wait till she heard ‘certainly’ from Wellfield.
‘Miss Wellfield! Is she going?’
‘Yes. Her brother is ready for her to come home, and as a suitable escort offers, he has sent for her.’
‘I see. And that will leave you alone.’
‘When she is gone, and you are gone, I shall be quite alone.’
She looked at him as she spoke with a frank, unconscious regret, openly expressed in her glance, and in the tone of her voice, before which he averted his eyes. It was at moments like these that he felt the ‘burnt fingers’ he had pictured to himself, give twinges and pangs of pain which were hard to bear without either word or exclamation. Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre, had been a favourite proverb with him, and he still believed in it a good deal, though he was aware, as most men and women who have passed the boundary of youth must be, either from observation or experience, that these trite, dull, hackneyed proverbs have a trick of realising themselves in a fashion the reverse of delightful. ‘Everything comes to pass for him who knows how to wait for it.’ But how does it come to pass? The oracle sayeth not, and he is a fool who asks. ‘And he shall give them their hearts’ desire’—another poetical, grandiloquently sounding promise. But how do they sometimes receive their hearts’ desire? Often in such fashion as to break the heart that has been waiting and desiring so long.
‘I am the bearer of an invitation to you from Fräulein Wilhelmi,’ he said, not answering her look and tone of regret. ‘Or rather, I might say, a mandate—a command.’