He rose to his feet. “Well, child,” he said, “I think I’ll be going. It’s no use our plaguing one another any further tonight. Things will right themselves, little one. Things will right themselves! It’s a crazy world—but the story isn’t finished yet.
“Don’t you worry about it,” he added gently, bending over her and pushing the hair back from her forehead. “Your old James hasn’t deserted you yet. He loves you better than you think—better than he knows himself perhaps!”
The girl seized the hand that caressed her and pressed it against her lips. Her breast rose and fell in quick troubled breathing.
“Come again soon,” she said, and then, with a wan smile, “if you care to.”
Their eyes met in a long perplexed clinging farewell. He was the first to break the tension.
“Good-night, child,” he said, and turning away, left the room without looking back.
While these events were occurring at Wild Pine, in the diplomatist’s study at the Gables Mr. Wone was expounding to Mr. Taxater the objects and purposes of his political campaign.
Mrs. Wotnot, leaner and more taciturn than ever, had just produced for the refreshment of the visitor a bottle of moderately good burgundy. Mr. Taxater had demanded “a little wine,” in the large general manner which his housekeeper always interpreted as a request for something short of the very best. It was clear that for the treasures of innermost wine-cellars Mr. Wone was not among the privileged.
The defender of the papacy had placed his visitor so that the light of the lamp fell upon his perspiring brow, upon his watery blue eyes, and upon his drooping, sandy-coloured moustache. Mr. Taxater himself was protected by a carefully arranged screen, out of the shadow of which the Mephistophelian sanctity of his patient profile loomed forth, vague and indistinct.
Mr. Wone’s mission was in his own mind tending rapidly to a satisfactory conclusion. The theologian had heard him with so much attention, had asked such searching and practical questions, had shown such sympathetic interest in all the convolutions and entanglements of the political situation, that Mr. Wone began to reproach himself for not having made use of such a capable ally earlier in the day.