"I do not mean to let you read any longer," he said, changing his seat to one opposite Clarissa. "That lamp is very well for an hour or so, but after that time the effect upon one's eyesight is the reverse of beneficial. I hope your book is not very interesting."
"If you will allow me to finish this story," Clarissa pleaded, scarcely lifting her eyes from the page. It was not particularly polite, perhaps, but it gave the stranger an admirable opportunity for remarking the dark thick lashes, tinged with the faintest gleam of gold, and the perfect curve of the full white eyelids.
"Upon my soul, she is the loveliest creature I ever saw," he said to himself; and then asked persistently, "Is the story a long one?"
"Only about half-dozen pages more; O, do please let me finish it!"
"You want to know what becomes of some one, or whom the heroine marries, of course. Well, to that extent I will be a party to the possible injury of your sight."
He still sat opposite to her, watching her in the old lazy way, while she read the last few pages of the magazine story. When she came to the end, a fact of which he seemed immediately aware, he rose and extinguished the little reading lamp, with an air of friendly tyranny.
"Merciless, you see," he said, laughing. "O, la jeunesse, what a delicious thing it is! Here have I been tossing and tumbling those unfortunate books about for a couple of hours at a stretch, without being able to fix my attention upon a single page; and here are you so profoundly absorbed in some trivial story, that I daresay you have scarcely been conscious of the outer world for the last two hours. O, youth and freshness, what pleasant things they are while we can keep them!"
"We were not allowed to read fiction at Madame Marot's," Miss Lovel answered simply. "Anything in the way of an English story is a treat when one has had nothing to read but Racine and Télémaque for about six years of one's life."
"The Inimical Brothers, and Iphigenia; Athalie, as performed before Louis Quatorze, by the young ladies of St. Cyr, and so on. Well, I confess there are circumstances under which even Racine might become a bore; and Télémaque has long been a synonym for dreariness and dejection of mind. You have not seen Rachel? No, I suppose not. She was a great creature, and conjured the dry bones into living breathing flesh. And Madame Marot's establishment, where you were so hardly treated, is a school, I conclude?"
"Yes, it is a school at Belforêt, near Paris. I have been there a long time, and am going home now to keep house for papa."