“I feel your reproof, Miss Clinton,” he said, hastily; “pray acquit me of having any intention to offend you, and, believe me, I will not again give you cause to complain of the tone of my conversation.”
She turned upon him an expression of such beaming gratefulness, that he was amply repaid for the momentary pang her observation—recalling him to the object of his visit, and the grave look with which it was accompanied—occasioned him.
He saw at once that in her humble, isolated position, she demanded his respect; she perceived by the instant alteration in his manner, that he was ready sincerely to accord it, not but that he had at first involuntarily paid it, and was now only straying from it because he had been led away by the turn of the conversation, and his sense of the prettiness of her face.
As he saw the rising blush upon her clear, transparent cheek, he felt himself become red, too, and he thought it was very ridiculous. It was at this moment their eyes met, and he received her grateful glance with a glow of deep gratification, and she read a language in his gaze, which no words could have framed.
There was an embarrassing silence for a minute, and then Mark dashed abruptly at the subject of his visit.
It appeared from what he stated that, although he had been to his father’s late abode in the Regent’s Park, he had not made himself known there, because his father and sister had quitted for the country, but had contented himself by making a few inquiries, and in ascertaining their present address.
He said, too, that he had endeavoured to see his old friend and companion, Harry Vivian, but had not succeeded, as he, too, was away from home.
Some business he had to transact in London, he added, was likely to detain him about a week, and therefore, he told her that it had struck him that it would be as well if he could obtain some little account of the changes that had occurred during his absence from England to his relatives, that he might be somewhat prepared for the new condition in which he had been assured he should find them, and he looked to Lotte as the person most capable of affording him that information.
Now, ordinarily, there would be nothing of interest or importance likely to grow out of such an interview, and Mark might have put his questions, and Lotte replied to them, without anything arising to move them out of the even tenour of their way; but it happened that Lotte possessed charms of feature and person of a peculiarly attractive kind, and Mark was possessed of discrimination and taste. In addition to this, he was gifted with an extremely handsome face, being a sun-browned likeness of his sister Flora; and, as Lotte had taste and discernment, too, it is not difficult to imagine that during the questioning and the replies, that each should gradually confirm the favourable opinion of the other which they had in the first instance formed.
We are loth to confess it, but at least two hours flew by before Mark or Lotte had a notion of the length to which the interview had extended, and then Mark rose, quite aware that it was time to leave. He was very reluctant to do so, but he obtained permission to come again, if once—if only once, to say good bye to her.