Thereafter both sat patiently waiting for the end of a dinner that seemed age-long. When, at last, they were alone Jean rose to his feet; he was very pale and his brown eyes glittered.
“Did Stefano tell you? I have found her and brought her here.”
“Oh, she has come, has she?”
“You think less of her for that. Ah, you will misjudge her until you know her. Wait.”
He hurried out of the room.
Hilaire stood on the hearth with his back to the fire. He repeated his formula, but there was a not unkindly light in his tired eyes, and when presently the door was opened and the girl came in he smiled.
The club foot, of which he was nervously conscious at times, held him to his place, but she came forward until she was close to him.
“You are his brother,” she began. “I—what a good fire.”
She knelt down on the bear skin and stretched her hands to the blaze. Hilaire noticed that she was excessively thin; the rose-flushed cheeks were hollow and the curves of the sweet cleft chin too sharp. He looked at her as she crouched at his feet; the nape of the slim neck showed a very pure white against the shabby black of her dress, there were fine threads of gold in the soft brown tangle of her hair.
Jean was dragging one of the great armchairs closer.