“Ah, there is the bell! She has come!” exclaimed Daisie, starting up, for she and her friend were to be Mrs. Fleming’s guests at an opera party that night.
“Tell Lutie to come in and show me her new gown,” Royall said, dreading to be left to his loneliness.
Daisie swept out into the hall, where her obsequious maid was waiting to throw the white opera cloak over her shoulders, and thus she interrupted the colloquy between Patrick and the caller, catching enough of the conversation to understand its import.
“Show the gentleman in, Patrick. I have time to see him,” she exclaimed, leading the way to a reception room.
She saw that the caller was a very fine-looking man—young, tall, handsome, clean-shaven, and wearing protecting glasses over penetrating dark eyes.
“I am Reed Raymond, madam, and I called in answer to your ad in the evening paper,” he said, with a very courtly bow.
“It is fortunate you came at this time, for my husband feels very dull this evening,” she answered, adding: “It is for him a companion is desired. He is a helpless cripple, who chafes always against his fate, and I must own that at times he is a most irritable person. But who could blame him—condemned to so sad an existence in the bloom of manhood! What he needs is a bright, cheerful young man, cultured, acquainted with the world.”
“I can furnish unexceptionable references from Lord Werter, with whom I have traveled the past five months,” the handsome applicant assured the lady.
“I think I will introduce you to—my husband, as he, after all, will be the one to decide on your availability,” said Daisie, rising and motioning the young man to come.
He bowed, and followed her into the hall, thinking to himself that she was certainly the rarest beauty that had ever dawned on his horizon.