He rose to welcome her.
"You have just arrived in town?" he said.
"Yes, Sir Oswald; a hackney-coach brought me here from the coach-office."
"I am very glad to see you," said the baronet, holding out his hand, which Honoria Milford touched lightly with her own neatly gloved fingers; "and I am happy to tell you that I have secured you a home which I think you will like."
"Oh, Sir Oswald, you are only too good to me. I shall never know how to thank you."
"Then do not thank me at all. Believe me, I desire no thanks. I have done nothing worthy of gratitude. An influence stronger than my own will has drawn me towards you; and in doing what I can to befriend you, I am only giving way to an impulse which I am powerless to resist."
The girl looked at her benefactor with a bewildered expression, and Sir
Oswald interpreted the look.
"Yes," he said, "you may well be astonished by what I tell you. I am astonished myself. There is something mysterious in the interest which you have inspired in my mind."
Although the baronet had thought continually of his protégée during the past week, he had never asked himself if there might not be some simple and easy solution possible for this bewildering enigma. He had never asked himself if it were not just within the limits of possibility that a man of fifty might fall a victim to that fatal fever called love.
He looked at the girl's beautiful face with the admiration which every man feels for the perfection of beauty—the pure, calm, reverential feeling of an artist, or a poet—and he never supposed it possible that the day might not be far distant when he would contemplate that lovely countenance with altered sentiments, with a deeper emotion.