"When will you tell me all that I want to know about you?" he said, bending towards her with tender insistence. "There is so much I have to ask."
"Oh, some time," she said, hurriedly, her pulses quickening. "Mine is not a story to be told on a great day like this."
He was silent a moment, but his face spoke for him.
"Our friendship has been a beautiful thing, hasn't it?" he said, at last, in a voice of emotion. "Look here!" He thrust his hand into his breast-pocket and half withdrew it. "Do you see where I carry your letters?"
"You shouldn't--they are not worthy."
"How charming you are in that dress--in that light! I shall always see you as you are to-night."
A silence. Excitement mounted in their veins. Suddenly he stooped and kissed her hands. They looked into each other's eyes, and the seconds passed like hours.
Presently, in the nearer drawing-room, there was a sound of approaching voices and they moved apart.
"Julie, Emily Lawrence is going," said the Duchess's voice, pitched in what seemed to Julie a strange and haughty note. "Captain Warkworth, Miss Lawrence thinks that you and she have common friends--Lady Blanche Moffatt and her daughter."
Captain Warkworth murmured some conventionality, and passed into the next drawing-room with Miss Lawrence.