Her cheeks were very white, but it was the whiteness of a pure white rose, and gave one no sense of ill-health, although there was about her a certain air of fragility. Her hair, soft and dark, waved back from her forehead in dusky masses, that made just the right background for her exquisitely chiselled features, and for the eyes, that seemed to concentrate in themselves all the loveliness of her face. They were wonderful eyes—dark, deep, unfathomable—with a mystery in their depths that enhanced their strange fascination. Those dark eyes with their sweeping lashes, and the crimson line of her beautiful mouth, were the only points of colour in her face, and as she turned her head to greet the visitor, the gleam of light that shot into those eyes, might well have turned a stronger head than Rupert's. Meeting her glance, his pulses quickened, and his own eyes grew bright; but his voice was very quiet, very self-contained, as he said—
"I am three days too soon—I know it, you need not tell me. But—I had to come to-day."
She put one of her hands into his, but she did not move from her prostrate position on the couch, and her visitor seated himself on a low chair by her side, whilst she gently withdrew the hand he still held, and said softly—
"Why especially to-day? You must not break through the stipulation, Rupert. If there is a particular reason now—I—will forgive you—but—we must keep to our bargain."
Gentle as was the voice, gentle as was the look in her eyes, a look of almost maternal tenderness, there was evidence that behind the tenderness, lay a most unusual strength of character. The woman with the beautiful face, although she lay prone upon a sofa, and was obviously an invalid, showed in her personality no trace of weakness. Her eyes met the eyes of her visitor squarely and straightly, there was almost a hint of severity in the set of her lips.
"Why did you come to-day?" she repeated, when he stirred uneasily in his chair, and kicked away a footstool in front of him, with a touch of irritability.
"When I begin to put it into words, it sounds a babyish reason; but that jackanapes, Layton, has been playing an idiotic practical joke upon me, and I—was fool enough to mind it. I wanted soothing down; and—I wanted your advice about a girl."
"About—a girl—you!" A note of excitement was apparent in her accents; she looked at him narrowly. "Has it—come—at last, Rupert?" she questioned, and her quiet voice shook just a little.
"No—no—my God—no!" he exclaimed, "nothing of that sort is ever likely to come into my life—again"—he uttered the last words under his breath, and his eyes rested hungrily on her beautiful face—"there is no question of—my caring for any girl—only—young Jack Layton has made me responsible for what may make a perfectly innocent girl unhappy." And forthwith he plunged into a full description of the sheaf of letters received that morning, winding up with a mention of the terse little letter signed "C.M." His listener's eyes twinkled mischievously as he told the first part of his story in wrathful accents, and over some of his quotations from the letters that had reached him she laughed—a frank, delicious laugh that seemed oddly out of keeping with the tragic mystery of her eyes. But as he described that last letter, with its simple wording, her face grew grave again, and when his voice ceased, she uttered the precise words that had fallen from his own lips three hours earlier.
"Poor little girl—oh! poor little girl!"