“Why, I do believe she is struck with me,” he thought, complacently. “She is a rattling beauty, too, by Jove! I wonder if she has got any money? If appearances go for anything, she has. She might prove quite a good catch. But I must be careful, or the little Dollman may get rusty, and I don’t want to cook my goose in that quarter yet.”
Mr. and Mrs. Everton had written to say that they would not come back for another week. Mr. Grice had had an early breakfast, and was already off to the office in which he spent most of his days. Mrs. Dollman had some housekeeping duties to attend to after breakfast was over, and there was, therefore, a capital opportunity for a tête-à-tête. Of this opportunity, nothing loth, Mr. Staines availed himself. Miss Stratton had seated herself on a chair at a small table standing at the window. This window, as we already know, overlooked the garden at the back of the house, and as the young lady, leaning her arms upon the table, asked his opinion concerning the identity of first one flower and then another, to all of which she professed herself a stranger, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Gregory Staines to take the chair facing Miss Stratton, on the other side of the table, in order to converse with her more naturally and pleasantly.
“Do you love flowers?” he asked, greedily gazing at the exquisite contour of the face within so short a distance of him.
“I love everything nice,” was the reply.
“You make me feel envious,” he said.
“Envious? Why, how can that be?” inquired Una, with a wonderful assumption of ingenuousness.
“Say rather, how can it be otherwise. Perhaps you do not know what it feels like to be loved by such a being as yourself. Your very presence is intoxicating.”
“Mr. Staines! Do you forget that we have not known each other an hour, and you are already paying me compliments?”
“An hour! Is it only an hour since? I suppose it is. And yet I feel as if I had known you all my life. It seems almost unaccountable, doesn’t it? There must be some natural affinity between you and me.”
And Miss Stratton permitted the man to talk on in this strain of offensive familiarity! Nay more, she encouraged it, for not only did she smile, apparently well pleased, at his vapid compliments, but she allowed herself to cast upon him such a languishing glance as fully excused his belief that he was exceedingly well pleasing in her sight.