"Frances!" Lawson sprang to meet her as the portière dropped behind her.
What she saw in his face and what she felt in her own heart held her speechless, but to Lawson it looked adorable confusion,—the warm flush and lowered lids, and red, proud mouth.
"Frances!" He strode across to her and would have put his arms about her, but that she shrank back.
His eyes showed quick amusement. He loved her a hundred times better so, with all her changeableness; he was never quite sure of her or of her mood.
"You do not know how I have longed to see you," he whispered. Her eyelids fluttered up, he had one searching look from darkened eyes, and then he knew he must make his peace.
"In Richmond," he began—"but you are not going to stand here?" He stood aside as she went past him, her scarlet skirt swishing against his feet, and he watched her with a delight he would not let her know for worlds. So she was angry!
He followed her and leaned against the mantel. She, too, was standing, as if to intimate that what he had to say were best said quickly.
"In Richmond," he began again, and hastened on, "I didn't see—you don't know what I wished for you,"—he would act as if there were no possible shadow between them,—"I searched the stores and searched. I went to Washington—" Surely this were explanation enough, though he had a swift and guilty remembrance of the one brief day in Washington, of the theatre party and the supper at the Jefferson when he came back to Richmond that night, which Elizabeth Martin had been so quick to arrange at his invitation and to promise not to write of, and then of the german next night. They had trusted to Frances not hearing, and she had not, nor ever did.