“Yes?” interrupted Priscilla.
“To coming to me to my house for a few days—even for a night or so—instead of going back to Hendon?”
“To your house, Mr Manchuri?”
“Yes, my dear; you will have a hearty welcome there, and I assure you it is quite large enough. I have got excellent servants, who will look after you, and you won’t see much of me except in the evening, and then perhaps you will cheer me up a bit; and—and I want to show you what you know, my dear—”
Priscilla turned first red and then white.
“I have told you why I cannot see that,” she said.
“That is the subject I want to discuss with you more fully. Will you come back with me to Park Lane, and to-night? I am an old man and lonely, and you, my dear little girl, have stirred something within me which has never been stirred for thirty years, and which I thought was quite dead. You won’t refuse me, will you? That, indeed, would be a sin. That would be putting a heart back once more into its grave.”
Priscilla was startled at the words, and still more at the expression in the old face; there was such a hungry, pleading look in the eyes.
“Oh no,” she said simply, “I am not so bad as that. If you want me like that—I, who am not wanted by any one else—indeed, I will come.”