Her lids drooped; her cheeks were very white, and he remarked the swift, agitated surge of her bosom, the fingers that were plucking at one another in her lap. Without looking up, she spoke again. “If you had the love to offer, what would the rest matter? What is a name that it should weigh so much?”
“Heyday!” He sighed, and smiled very wistfully. “You are young, child. In time you will understand what place the world assigns to such men as I. It is a place I could ask no woman to share. Such as I am, could I speak of love to any woman?”
“Yet you spoke of love once to me,” she reminded him, scarcely above her breath, and stabbed him with the recollection.
“In an hour of moonshine, an hour of madness, when I was a reckless fool that must give tongue to every impulse. You reproved me then in just the terms my case deserved. Hortensia,” he bent towards her, leaning on his cane, “'tis very sweet and merciful in you to recall it without reproach. Recall it no more, save to think with scorn of the fleering coxcomb who was so lost to the respect that is due to so sweet a lady. I have told you so much of myself to-day that you may.”
“Decidedly,” came a shrill, ironical voice from the arbor's entrance, “I may congratulate you, sir, upon the prodigious strides of your recovery.”
Mr. Caryll straightened himself from his stooping posture, turned and made Lady Ostermore a bow, his whole manner changed again to that which was habitual to him. “And no less decidedly, my lady,” said he with a tight-lipped smile, “may I congratulate your ladyship's son upon that happy circumstance, which is—as I have learned—so greatly due to the steps your ladyship took—for which I shall be ever grateful—to ensure that I should be made whole again.”
CHAPTER XIII. THE FORLORN HOPE
Her ladyship stood a moment, leaning upon her cane, her head thrown back, her thin lip curling, and her eyes playing over Mr. Caryll with a look of dislike that she made no attempt to dissemble.
Mr. Caryll found the situation redolent with comedy. He had a quick eye for such matters; so quick an eye that he deplored on the present occasion her ladyship's entire lack of a sense of humor. But for that lamentable shortcoming, she might have enjoyed with him the grotesqueness of her having—she, who disliked him so exceedingly—toiled and anguished, robbed herself of sleep, and hoped and prayed with more fervor, perhaps, than she had ever yet hoped and prayed for anything, that his life might be spared.