Despard stood there perfectly grave. He would hazard no repulse; he waited for her.
She looked up, but there was no smile on her face—only the calm self-composedness which it seemed to him he knew so well. How was it so? Had he met her before in some former existence? Why did all about her seem at once strange and yet familiar? He had never experienced the like before.
These thoughts—scarcely thoughts indeed—flickered through his brain as he looked at her. They served one purpose at least, they prevented his feeling or looking awkward, could such a state of things have been conceived possible.
Seeing that he was not going to speak, remembering, perhaps, that if he remembered the last words she had honoured him with, he could scarcely be expected to do so, she at last opened her lips.
“That,” she said quietly, slightly inclining her head in the direction where young Leslie had stood, “was, under the circumstances, unnecessary.”
“He did not know,” said Despard.
“I suppose not; though I don’t know. Perhaps you told him you had forgotten my name.”
“No,” he replied, “I did not. It would not have been true.”
She smiled very slightly.
“There is no dancing to-night,” she said. “May I ask—?” and she hesitated.