The lady smiled--a smile which might have been described as of the glacial kind.
"Will you sit down, Sir Frank?"
He sat down, on the extreme edge of a chair, as if fearful of occupying too much of it at once. He looked--and no doubt was--excessively uncomfortable. Placing herself in the only arm-chair the room contained, she observed him with an air which was at once both cruel and condescending.
"You have written me one or two notes, Sir Frank?"
He stammered worse than ever. Not only did he find the question an awkward one, but it seemed to him that the lady was even more bewitching in the arm-chair than she had been when standing up. As he realised--or thought he realised--her charms still more clearly, his few remaining senses were rapidly deserting him.
"I--I'm afraid I did."
"In which you asked me, a perfect stranger, to be your wife?"
"I--I'm awfully sorry."
"You are sorry? Indeed. Do you mean that you are sorry you asked me to be your wife?"
He gasped. There was something in her tone, something in the way in which she peeped at him from under the long lashes which shaded her violet eyes, something in her attitude, in the quality of the smile which parted her pretty lips, which set every fibre in his body palpitating. What did she mean? What could she mean? Was it possible that she meant--what he had scarcely dared to hope she ever would mean?