His eye seeks the travelling-clock standing on the table beside him, and as he turns somewhat to get an exacter view of it, she notes with how much greater ease and freedom he can move.
“I have come to stay the night.”
“The night!”
“Yes; the night. My men have left me and gone to London.”
She answers colourlessly, looking straight before her; but through her drooped eyelids her spirit sees the almost incredulous delight of his.
There is a moment’s pause; next, in a long sigh of relief, come the words—
“Then we shall have time for everything!”
She smiles with slow relish of and acquiescence in his thought, despite the apparent protest in her—
“That is rather comprehensive, isn’t it?”
“I mean,” he continues, eagerly sitting up, and leaning on his elbow, “that after your former visits I have always felt that we—that I had not made the most of them; but that I had egotistically frittered away our time”—neither of them notes the significance of the plural pronoun—“talking of myself.”