She glanced up at me. Hers were fine eyes, though about them there were two peculiarities--they seemed to be looking, not at me, but at something far away, and they always smiled.
"It seems so odd. When I left England, though I was poor, I had troops of friends. Now I have come back I am rich, but all my friends seem to have vanished into air. I have not one."
"That is a state of things which is not likely to continue long."
"Perhaps not; I hope not--one does not like to be friendless. But it is all so different to what I had looked forward to. When one has been absent a long time from home, and is able to return at last, one dreams dreams. Only those who have experienced it can know how"--she hesitated, as if for a word--"strange it feels when one is forced to recognise that those dreams have been but dreams." She glanced down; then up again. "I have many acquaintances; they are not friends."
I agreed with her, asking myself at the same time what she might happen to mean. Was she dropping a hint to me? If so, I might be more than half disposed to take it. Mrs. Carruth appealed to me strangely, every moment more and more. The minutes sped; before I knew it we were in town.
I saw her into a hansom at Victoria. She asked me to call on her; to renew and improve the acquaintance made in the train. I said that I would. What is more, when she was gone, I told myself that I would keep my promise.
Her voice lingered in my ears.
CHAPTER XI.
[WHAT MR. TENNANT HAD WRITTEN.]
There were several letters by the morning's post. One's creditors, at any rate, seemed to be in town. Do those sort of people ever go away? Lily Langdale wanted me to look her up. Confound little Lily Langdale! I had looked her up too much already. Chirpy Mason, writing from Monte Carlo, wanted to know if I could do him a hundred or two. Would I wire? No; I would neither do the one or the other. I knew Chirpy. He had probably made the same request to half a dozen more of us. There were only two letters among the heap worth looking at. One contained just two type-written words, "Buy Boomjopfs." No address, no signature, no nothing. I put that aside. It would entail my going into the City as soon as I could. The other letter was from Haselton Jardine:--