The girl sat for some moments with her eyes on the ground.
"He is troubled," she said, finally. "I am glad to talk with you, for I cannot get him to tell me anything. He is greatly troubled, and I am worried beyond expression. I can't understand it. He has always confided in me so thoroughly, but now he shakes his head and says it is nothing, trying to look brighter even when the tears are almost ready to fall. What can it be, Mr. Roseleaf? He has no companions outside of his office and this house? He sits by himself, and isn't a bit like he used to be and every day I think he grows worse."
Roseleaf asked if Daisy had talked much with her sister about it.
"No," she said, with a headshake. "I don't believe Millie has noticed anything. She is so occupied with her literary matters"—there was a sarcastic touch upon the word, that did not escape the listener—"she has no time for such things. I hope you won't think I mean to criticise her," added the young girl, with a blush. "I know you care a great deal for my sister, and—"
She stopped in the midst of the sentence, leaving it unfinished. And Roseleaf thought how interesting this girl had become.
"Let me confide in you, Daisy," he said, in his softest tone. "I do not care 'a great deal,' nor even a very little for your sister. You see," he went on, in response to the startled look that greeted him, "I am to be a novelist. To be successful in writing fiction, I have been told that I ought to be in love—just once—myself. And I came here and tried very hard to fall in love with Miss Millicent; and I simply cannot."
Daisy's fresh young laugh rang out on the air of the evening.
"Poor man!" she cried, with mock pity. "And hasn't she tried to help you?"
"No. She hasn't. And as soon as I get the work done I have commenced for her, I am going away."
The child—she was scarcely more than that—grew whiter, but the shadows of the evening hid the fact from her companion.