She is gone! Blessed, blessed author of the Féodorovna Candle! Long may his dropless tapers enlighten the world! For a moment, though it is daylight, he has lit up the universe for two persons! One of them apparently feels that his tether is a short one, and that he must take time by the forelock. The door has hardly closed before he says—
“You are not sitting in the same place as you did on Monday!”
“No.”
The inference that he thinks the change not one for the better is so clear that there would be prudery in ignoring it; and, besides, has not Féodorovna impressed upon her that his lightest whim is to be respected? So she moves with quiet matter-of-factness to the chair originally occupied by her. It cannot be good for his wound that he should slew himself round, as he was doing a moment ago, to get a better prospect of her.
“Thank you! Thank you also a thousand times more for coming to see me again.”
“Why shouldn’t I come to see you again?”
The question is addressed more to herself in reality than to him, and is an answer to her own misgivings rather than to his gratitude. A slight shade of surprise crosses the eager brightness of his face.
“You did not see your way to it at first, so Mrs. Prince told me.”
“I did not want to stand in the way of other visitors,” she answers—“my uncle, Rupert,” adding with difficulty, “We all claim our part in Bill’s friend.”
She looks steadily at him, and sees a sort of chill come into his eyes—at her lumping of herself and her family in a cold generalization.