And there Lady Constance stopped, with a little gasp.
"Oh! I beg your pardon. I am so sorry. I forgot," she added breathlessly.
Richard's face had become thin and keen.
"Forget just as often as you can, please," he answered huskily. "I would infinitely rather have you—have everybody—forget altogether—if possible."
"Oh! but I think that would be wrong of me," she rejoined, with gentle dogmatism. "It is selfish to forget anything that is very sad."
"And is this so very sad?" Richard asked, almost harshly.
The girl stared at him with parted lips.
"Oh yes!" she said slowly. "Of course,—don't you think so? It is dreadfully sad."—And then, her attitude still unchanged and her pretty plump hands still folded on her lap, she went on, in her touching determination to sustain the conversation with due readiness and civility. "Brockhurst is a much larger house than Whitney, isn't it? I thought so the day we drove over to luncheon—when that beautiful, French cousin of yours was staying with you, you remember?"
"Yes, I remember," Richard said.
And as he spoke Madame de Vallorbes, clothed in the seawaves, crowned and shod with gold, seemed to stand for a moment beside his innocent, little fiancée. How long it was since he had heard from her! Did she want money, he wondered? It would be intolerable if, because of his marriage, she never let him help her again. And all the while Lady Constance's unemotional, careful, little voice continued, as did the ceaseless murmur of London.