I left him on board the yacht. I can, as the common people say, ‘valet myself’ for a day or two.”
“A day or two?” echoed Sibyl—“But you surely will not leave us so soon? You promised to make a long visit here.”
“Did I?” and he regarded her steadily, with the same languorous admiration in his eyes—“But, my dear Lady Sibyl, time alters our ideas, and I am not sure whether you and your excellent husband are of the same opinion as you were when you started on your wedding-tour. You may not want me now!”
He said this with a significance to which I paid no heed whatever.
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“Not want you!” I exclaimed—“I shall always want you Lucio,—you are the best friend I ever had, and the only one I care to keep. Believe me!—there’s my hand upon it!”
He looked at me curiously for a minute,—then turned his head towards my wife.
“And what does Lady Sibyl say?” he asked in a gentle, almost caressing tone.
“Lady Sibyl says,” she answered with a smile, and the colour coming and going in her cheeks—“that she will be proud and glad if you will consider Willowsmere your home as long as you have leisure to make it so,—and that she hopes,—though you are reputed to be a hater of women,—” here she raised her beautiful eyes and fixed them full upon him—“you will relent a little in favour of your present châtelaine
!”
With these words, and a playful salutation, she passed out of the room into the garden, and stood on the lawn at a little distance from us, her white robes shimmering in the mellow autumnal twilight,—and Lucio, springing up from his seat, looked after her, clapping his hand down heavily on my shoulder.