“Oh,” she said, “if I could tell you all!”
Unconsciously she put out her hand, and Isabey, scarcely knowing what he did, took it. His training was thoroughly French, and he had the old-fashioned French idea that only the man who loved a woman should touch her hand. When he felt Angela’s soft palm upon his, it thrilled him, and Angela, realizing the delicate pressure of his fingers, suddenly withdrew her hand.
But at that moment the invisible chain was forged. They could not look at each other with indifference, and were perforce instinctively on their guard with each other.
“I—I don’t know what made me do that,” Angela faltered. “But everything is so strange to me now, and I feel so friendless. Six months ago I had a plenty of people to love me, now I seem to have no one.”
Then the soft frou-frou of dainty skirts and Adrienne’s delicate footfall was heard, and the next moment she stood before them.
Never had Angela or Isabey, either, seen Adrienne look more seductive, for beautiful she was not in its regular sense. The heat had brought a faint flush into her usually colorless face and a smile parted her scarlet lips. She was, as always, exquisitely dressed, and there was about her that singular aroma of elegance which is the possession of some women.
She and Isabey greeted each other with the utmost friendliness, but in the French fashion, with bows and not with a clasp of the hand. Nevertheless, Adrienne felt instinctively that she had arrived at an inopportune moment. As she approached she had heard Angela’s voice, low and tremulous, and Isabey’s, in replying, had that unmistakable note of intimacy which Adrienne had never heard him use before toward any woman.
He was entirely at his ease, although he wished very much that Adrienne had stayed away a little longer. Angela, however, showed a slight confusion, and then Lyddon walked into the room. He carried an English newspaper, and, after a few minutes’ talk, asked to read aloud the leading article in it concerning the Civil War in America. Its view was pessimistic, and it asked some puzzling questions concerning the future of the South whether it succeeded or failed. Lyddon was surprised to find that Isabey’s thought had gone beyond the conflict and that he, too, saw the enormous difficulties which lay in the path of the South whether slavery remained or was abolished.
“But,” he said, after an animated discussion with Lyddon, “there is nothing for us to do but to fight and march and march and fight. We have been driven to fight, and I think we love to fight. We can’t think about to-morrow; there may be no to-morrow for a good many of us.”
Angela longed, while the two men were talking, to ask questions, but following the rule which she had laid down for herself, to take no part in discussions about the war, remained silent.