"When will you come to live in it, Miss Deleah?"
She was sitting in a low chair and leaning negligently upon the table, her cheek in her hand, her fingers lost in the masses of her black waving hair, her eyes turned with polite interest upon his face. She dropped them now, and looked at the tablecloth without speaking.
"When?" he repeated, and was breathless again in the horrible way she remembered.
"I told you: I am not going to live in it at all, Mr. Gibbon."
He leaned towards her, throwing himself forward on his arms that were folded upon the table; she felt his eyes glowering upon her down-bent face: "Oh, yes, Miss Deleah!" he implored.
"I told you before," she said; and then distressedly like a child wearied by importunities, "Oh I wish you—I wish every one would leave me alone!"
It was all very well to be pretty and admired, but not much gratification, thanks to Bessie's jealousy, and untoward circumstances, had Deleah experienced so far from looks or lovers.
There was a young assistant music-master, coming twice a week to Miss Chaplin's, who had taken to blushing and paling when Deleah spoke to him. To her great embarrassment a rosebud or a spray of forget-me-not would be found deposited on the chair in which she sat to play propriety when the pupils took their lessons. On the days when with great difficulty she managed to elude Reggie, a lout of a grammar-school sixth-form boy, whose name even she did not know, would watch her exit from the school, and stalk at her heels, keeping sentinel over her, in a way that she felt was making her ridiculous, to her own door. She had caught Mr. Pretty peeping between the biscuit tins to watch her down the street. He would leave any customer he was serving to rush forward with hateful assiduousness with a stool for her to sit on, as soon as she entered the shop. He would entice Franky, who had a great admiration for Mr. Pretty, to sit in the cellar with him of evenings to talk about the younger sister. There was Reggie always pestering; and now here again were the unwelcome attentions of the Honourable Charles.
"I do so much wish you would all leave me alone!"
"How can I leave you alone when I so much love you, Deleah."