“Then you are the Mr. Gordon she talks so much about?”
“Miss Elliston talk about me! How do you know that?” Tom asked, with an increase of color in his face.
Very foolishly I told him how I knew, and of the photograph which must be his, though it was not quite like him now.
“Yes, it was taken three years ago, and we exchanged. I remember it now—and she has it yet,” he said, abruptly; then looking steadily at me across the table, he continued: “Norah, I have not told you all the reasons which brought me home. I am thinking of getting married and settling down in England among the daisies and violets.”
“Yes, Tom,” I said, with a great throb of pain in my heart, for I knew his marriage with Miss Elliston would separate him from me further than his absence in India had done.
“Are you not glad?” he added, and there was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, and a lurking smile at the corners of his mouth.
Then I told a fib, and said I was glad, for I could some time hope to see him. My life would not be so lonely.
He had risen by this time, and was putting on his overcoat, which made him so big and bearish.
“Good-by, Mousey, till to-morrow. Take off those boots and dry your feet the instant I am gone. I cannot have you sick now. Au revoir.”
He passed his warm hands caressingly over my hair and across my cheek, and then he was gone, and I sat down alone to think it all over, and wonder if it really was Tom who had been there, or if it was a dream from which I should awaken. Naturally too, I followed him in imagination to the dinner, and saw Miss Lucy in her blue silk with white roses in her hair, and to my very finger tips I felt how Tom must be impressed with the difference between her high-bred grace and ease of manner, and the little shrinking woman in faded gray, with worn out, leaky boots. I did not take them off, but held them to the fire and watched the steam as it came from the soles, and rather enjoyed my poverty and loneliness, and thought hard things against Miss Elliston, who had known I was at the hotel and had never spoken to me.