“What is it, then?”
“I should like one of those sequins which you have arranged in your hair.”
Eline smiled, and carefully she took from her hair the row of sequins and removed one of the coins, which she offered to him.
“Thank you,” he said, and attached the coin to his watch-chain.
A strange feeling came over Eline. She felt very contented, very happy, and yet somewhat abashed, and she asked herself which Betsy would have considered less proper: to go with her uncle and aunt to that ball, or to spend the evening alone, and en négligé, even with St. Clare? The latter certainly, she thought. But he seemed to think it so simple and natural that she did not even venture to ask him whether she might go and change her dress.
“And now let us have a little quiet chat,” he said, as he sat down in a fauteuil, and she remained sitting on the sofa, still a little shy, and playing with her row of sequins. “Tell me something, do—of your childhood, or of your travels.”
She said she did not know what to tell him, but again he asked her. She answered him, and slowly her confidence in herself came back, and she told him of Aunt Vere, of her Ouida literature, and especially of her father and his great canvases which he never completed. She told him also of her singing, of Betsy and Henk, and added that formerly she thought very differently from what she thought now, and that she appeared different too.
“What is it you call formerly?” [[288]]
“I mean before my illness, and before I went travelling with uncle and aunt—before—my engagement.”
“And how did you look then?”