I came back in a few minutes with the key. Mr. Dabney was busy with the card catalogue, but, for some reason,—I have always had a catlike sense in such matters,—I felt that he had only just returned to this position, and that he wanted me to believe that he had spent the entire time of my absence there.
“These other housekeepers,” he said, “were n't very earnest about earning their living, were they? Mrs. Brane was telling me—”
“Oh,” I smiled, rather surprised that Mrs. Brane had been so confidential. To me she had never mentioned the other housekeepers. “They were very nervous women. You see, I am not.”
He turned the key about in his hand, looked down, then up at me demurely. He had the most disarming and trust-inspiring look.
“No,” he said, “you are not nervous. It's a great thing to have a steady nerve. You're not easily startled.” Then, turning to the bookcase, he added sharply, looking back at me as he spoke, “Do you know anything about Russia?”
“No,” I answered; “that is, very little.” There were reasons why this subject was distasteful to me. Again I moved away.
He opened the bookcase.
“Phew!” he said,—“the dust of ages here! I'll have to ask Mrs. Brane to let you—”
I went out and shut the door.
But I was not so easily to escape young Dabney's determination to see more of me. Mrs. Brane, that very evening, asked me to spend my mornings dusting, her husband's books and cataloguing them. At first I dreaded these hours with our visitor, but as the days went by I came more and more to enjoy them. I found myself talking to Mr. Dabney freely, more about my thoughts and fancies than about my life, which holds too much that is painful. And he was, at first, a most frank and engaging companion. I was young and lonely, I had never had such pleasant intercourse. Well, there is no use apologizing for it, trying to explain it, beating about the bush,—I lost my heart to him. It went out irrevocably before the shadow fell. And I thought that his heart had begun to move towards mine. Sometimes there was the strangest look of troubled feeling in his eyes.