But still she was not angry—not indignant; she was only bitterly disappointed.
She sat thus for a minute or two. She did not hear the glass door, already unlatched, open softly; her eyes were hidden; she did not see a shadow that fell across the white pages of her waltz—Les Papillons, it happened to be called; she was unconscious that any one had entered the room, till a voice close behind her made her start.
“Geneviève,” it said, “are you asleep?”
Then she looked up, knowing full well before she did so whose it was, knowing, too, by the quick beating of her heart, the sudden thrill through all her being, how welcome, how dangerously welcome was its owner—Cicely’s lover! Little thought she of Cicely at that moment.
She lifted her lovely face; she looked up at Mr. Fawcett with smiles dimpling about her mouth, though her eyes were still wet with tears.
“Mr. Fawcett!” she exclaimed softly. “No, I was not asleep, but I did not hear you come in.”
“What are you doing, or pretending to be doing, you idle little person?” he said, coming nearer and looking over her at the sheets of music on the desk; “practising ‘Les Papillons!’ That is very good of you. I have been longing to hear it again.”
“I do not know it well yet,” said Geneviève, with the right hand idly playing the notes of the waltz. Now that she had got over the first surprise of his presence, she began to feel constrained and unhappy, to realise the vast distance between to-day and yesterday.
“Never mind,” he said. “I won’t ask to hear it till you wish to play it. You will know it soon, your fingers will dance away at it beautifully. But I won’t interrupt you any more,” he added, glancing round the room. “Where is Cicely, by the bye, do you know? Up with her father, I suppose; there is never any getting hold of her.”
“No,” said Geneviève, feeling the colour deepen in her cheeks as she spoke, “no, Cicely is not with my uncle. She is out.”