“Very well,” said Cecily. Her tone was rather cold, and Trevor, glancing at her, observed for the first time how pale and fagged she looked.
“Are you not well, dear?” he said kindly.
“Oh! yes. I am well enough,” she answered, brightening up at once under the influence of his words; “but, Trevor,” she went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “I am very dull about papa. I don’t think he is well.”
Mr. Fawcett said nothing, but his blue eyes looked sympathy and encouraged her to say more. “I did not like to make you dull,” she went on, “you seem in such very good spirits, Trevor,” with the slightest possible accent of reproach. “But you must not be vexed with me for being rather stupid. I can’t help it.”
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “You are not vexed with me, are you?” she whispered.
Mr. Fawcett’s face had grown grave. “Vexed with you,” he repeated, “of course not. Why should I be? At least I am only vexed with you for one thing. I hate all this—I detest it. I only wish you and I had been married months ago; by this time we should have been away somewhere by ourselves with no one to interfere with us. As it is, I never seem to see you now, Cicely; I don’t know how it is.”
The sunshine seemed to have crept back again,—a somewhat uncertain, tremulous light, but sunshine for all that. “Dear Trevor,” said Cicely softly, “there is not really any change. It is only that I am so much taken up at home, and you have been away so long. But if you are not vexed with me, it will be all right. Sometimes lately I have fancied I had grown dull and stupid and that you—”
She had laid her hand appealingly on Trevor’s arm, his eyes were looking down upon her with an almost remorseful tenderness, some eager words were on his lips, when a voice beside them—it was Geneviève’s—made both him and Cicely start.
“Oh! Mr. Fawcett,” she exclaimed, “I want so much to tell you, ah! is Cicely already tired?” with a curious change of tone from the brightness of the first sentence. “I beg your pardon, I knew not that I interrupted you,” she added timidly, making a little movement as if to retire into the back ground.
“Interrupt! Nonsense,” exclaimed Trevor, laughing. “We have been wondering how you got on with Dangerfield. Cicely, you must remember which are your dances with me. Ours,” to Geneviève, as he passed her, “is the next, you know.”