“Do you really?” she said, with a very distinct accent of contempt. “Then I suppose you have not read—” and she named a book on everybody’s table at the moment.
Despard’s face lighted up.
“Oh, indeed, yes,” he said. “That is not an ordinary book of travels;” and he went on to speak of the volume in question in a manner which showed that he had read it intelligently, while Miss Fforde, forgetting herself and her companion in the interest of what he said, responded sympathetically.
Half unconsciously, as they talked they strolled up and down the wide open space in front of the ferns. Suddenly voices, apparently approaching them, caught the girl’s ear.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “my friends will be wondering what has become of me! I must go. Good-bye, Mr Norreys,” and she held out her hand. There was something simple and perfectly natural in her manner as she did so, which struck him. It was almost as if she were throwing off impulsively a part which she was tired of playing.
He held her hand for a quarter of an instant longer than was actually necessary.
“I—I hope we may meet again, Miss Ford,” he said, simply but cordially—something in her present manner was infectious—“and continue our talk.”
She glanced up at him.
“I hope so, too,” she said quickly. But then her brows contracted again a little. “At least—I don’t know that it is very probable,” she added disconnectedly, as she hastened away in the direction whence came the voices.
“Hasn’t many invitations, I dare say,” he said to himself as he looked after her. “If she had been still with Gertrude Englewood I might, perhaps, have got one or two people to be civil to them. But I daresay it would have been Quixotic, and it’s the sort of thing I dislike doing—putting one’s self under obligation for no real reason.”