“Same as ever.”
Ruggles saw he had not returned in vain, and that he was destined to take up his part of the business just as he had laid it out for himself to Lord Galorey. “It’s up to me now: I’ll have to take care of the actress, and I’m darned if I haven’t got a job. If Dan colors up like that at the sight of her glove, I wonder what he does when he holds her hand!”
CHAPTER XXII—WHAT WILL YOU TAKE?
When Dan, on the minute of two, went to the Savoy, Higgins, as was her custom, did not meet him. Miss Lane met him herself. She was reading a letter by the table, and when Dan was announced she put it back in its envelope. Blair had seen her only in soft clinging evening dresses, in white visionary clothes, or in her dazzling part costume, where the play dress of the dancer displayed her beauty and her charms. To-day she wore a tailor-made gown, and in her dark cloth dress, in her small hat, she seemed a new woman—some one he hadn’t known and did not know, and he experienced the thrill a man always feels when the woman he loves appears in an unaccustomed dress and suggests a new mystery.
“Oh, I say! You’re not going out, are you?”
In the lapel of her close little coat was a flower he had given her. He wanted to lean forward and kiss it as it rested there. She assured him:
“I have just come in; had an early lunch and took a long walk—think of it! I haven’t taken a walk alone since I can remember!”
Her walk had given her only the ghost of a flush, which rose over her delicate skin, fading away like a furling flag. Her frailness, her slenderness, the air of good-breeding her dress gave her, added to Dan’s deepening emotions. She seemed infinitely dear, and a thing to be protected and fostered.
“Can’t you sit down for a minute? I’ve come to make you a real call.”
“Of course,” she laughed. “But, first, I must answer this letter.”