“That will do, you may bring him in,” he said, at last.
The next moment:
“Ah, Mr. Bonair, will you pardon this intrusion?”
“You are welcome, Mr. Weston. Pray be seated,” Charley answered quietly, gazing hard at his handsome rival.
Truly he was handsome and manly, with that dark, flashing eye that so easily wins its way to a woman’s heart. Charley Bonair wondered jealously that Berry had been able to withstand its fascination.
“Dear little one, surely she loved me well,” he thought, with a twinge of the bitterest remorse and pain.
The manager had somewhat recovered his self-possession that had wavered in the presence of his dying love. He did not give way as before Mrs. Cline, but conversed easily and with a sorrowful dignity that impressed the hearer, against his wishes, with profound respect.
“A dangerous rival, and perhaps more worthy of her than I am,” Bonair said to himself, with a sweeping self-contempt new and withering.
If she lived, poor little Berry, who could tell but that such devotion might win her at last?—but he groaned aloud at the thought.
“Your pardon. A twinge of pain in that confounded shoulder,” he explained.