“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I expected to find Mrs. Brady here. I asked for her and the servant pointed to this door.”
“Mrs. Brady is dangerously ill,” Grace replied; “with fever,” she added, seeing the stranger advance into the room; then a second’s doubt and hesitation, and she exclaimed, holding out her hand,—
“Why, it must be John Riley!”
“And you,” he said, after an almost imperceptible pause, “must be Miss Moffat, though I should scarcely have known you.”
“I have had little rest and much anxiety since I returned to Ireland,” she answered, as if apologizing for the change in her appearance.
He smiled gravely; it was not the right time, and he was not the right person, to tell her she had altered almost beyond his recognition, merely because she was now the most beautiful woman he had ever met.
“I thought you were in England,” he said, putting aside the difficulty by changing the subject.
“So I was,” she replied, “until very lately. I came over here directly I heard about Mr. Brady, and I am glad I did come, for Mrs. Brady is very lonely and very ill. And that reminds me you ought not to stay here.”
“Why not?”
“For fear of infection.”