So he did not intend to tell her that she had startled him by her likeness to a poor working girl whose life he had saved two years ago? It was all the better. She would be saved from the sin of evading her identity.
A minute more, and they were sitting side by side on the same sofa, talking to each other with the formality of strangers, it is true, yet gazing into each other’s eyes with a more than ordinary interest.
He was handsomer than ever, she was thinking, and a thrill of rapture went through her as she thought she detected in the blue eyes a look of more than conventional admiration.
“What if he should love me? Oh, Heaven, the sweetness of that thought!” the girl whispered to her throbbing heart, and the warm color rose to her face, and the brown eyes filled with a happy light.
“I have read your book. Is it your first one?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Converse tells me that it has had a flattering success. Your wife must feel very proud of you.”
She was fanning herself with useless energy—the room was not too warm—as she put this leader.
“My wife!” he said, in a puzzled tone, then laughed. “I hope she will be when I get her, but just now she is in the future.”
“Oh, so you are not a married man?” she exclaimed naïvely, and he shook his head, thinking to himself: