Whereupon Marion drew hack laughing, and allowed him to enter the drawing-room.
“You are expecting Bailey?” he said; “did he say he would call this evening?”
“Yes, at nine o’clock. He wanted to see how Cissy was, after her drive this afternoon.”
“At nine,” said Ralph, consulting his watch. “That’s still a quarter of an hour off. Are you busy, Miss Freer, or may I stay a few minutes?” adding to himself mentally, “I must take care that old gossip Bailey does not catch me here, A nice amount of mischief he would make, if he went chattering to my mother while away.”
“Oh no, I’m not particularly busy,” replied Marion, rather sadly, it seemed to Ralph. “Indeed my evenings have been rather dull lately, but I hope Cissy will soon be all right again.”
“I hope so too,” said Ralph, and then he sat still, utterly at a loss what more to say, and how to say it. Marion seemed calm and subdued. Perfectly free from nervousness or embarrassment, but yet in some subtle way he was conscious of a change in her.
He looked at her as she at there opposite him, so quiet and pale. Spirit-like, she seemed to his fancy, in her white, thin dress: the faint colourless evening light seeming rather to shadow than illumine her slight girlish figure. A sort of shiver ran through him. She looked so fragile, so gentle and subdued. What if this were the beginning of the end? What if he were thus to lose her? Lose her, before indeed he could call her his. It was all he could do to control himself, to refrain from gathering this fair, clinging, child-like creature in his arms, and telling her that there she should be held for ever.
But he kept firmly to his resolution. Something of what was in his heart he would say; but not yet the whole.
“Miss Freer,” he began. “I wanted particularly to see you this evening, for to-morrow again I am going away.”
She looked up at him gravely, but hardly seemed surprised.