"It is so, Miss Beauchamp. Lenty is fairly through with the work for his winter exhibition, and he looks to start the first of the month."
"But I do not comprehend how it is you do not bring any news of M. Dax. Have you not then been with him all the time since we have last seen you?"
"I have been abroad," Adrian replied. "My cousin, of whom you may remember to have heard me speak—Joanna Smyrthwaite—"
He hesitated, and his companion, though stoutly resolved against all yielding and pity in his direction, could not but note the melancholy and extreme pallor of his handsome face.
"But certainly I remember," she returned rather hastily. "Is she ill, then, poor lady, one of those pensive abstractions whom it has been your interesting mission to materialize and rejuvenate?"
"She is no longer ill," he answered. "She is dead."
"Ah! quel malheur inattendu! Truly that is most sad," Gabrielle said in accents of concern. Then for a moment she looked at Adrian with a very singular expression. "I offer you my sympathy, my condolences, Mr. Savage, upon this unhappy event."
And, turning aside, she began to move toward the doorway of the outer room, upon the threshold of which her hostess stood talking to Byewater.
But Adrian arrested her impetuously.
"Stay, Madame!" he cried, joining his hands as in supplication. "Stay, I implore you, and permit me a few minutes' conversation. By this you will confer the greatest benefit upon me; for so, and so only, can misunderstandings and misconstructions be avoided."