"I think, as Marian says, that I have earned you. I have waited for you eighteen years. You must not make me wait much longer. I will not let you, Ronald. When one has loved, for eighteen years, as I have loved, one's love--one's love becomes--too much for one." She looked down as if, although she was alone, she was ashamed. "I wonder if it was the climate, or whether it is I. I think--I think that it is I. Love with me is not, I think, an affair of climate." She stretched out her arms in front of her with a strange gesture of strange passion. "I think that I am made for love! Ronald, I am made for love! That day of which, almost in my madness, I have dreamed, that day for which I have waited eighteen years, that day when you shall take me in your arms, I shall go mad--with joy--that joy which follows after waiting. Ronald! Ronald!"
Again she put her hands before her face. She trembled as with fever. She began to pace, feverishly, about the room.
"I wonder what he is waiting for? I wonder if he thinks it is too soon? Too soon! Too soon! If he thinks it is too soon, I, even I, I myself, will show him if it is too soon. Ronald! Ronald!"
Even while the name was still upon her lips a servant was standing with the handle of the open door in his hand, announcing,--
"Mr Ferguson!"
And Mr Ferguson came in.
As Lady Griswold turned to greet him, one could not but feel that she was beautiful. Beautiful with the beauty which is the crowning beauty of all beauty in the eyes of many men. The beauty of the beautiful woman who is in the full, rich, ripe glory of her summer's prime. She advanced to him with both her hands held out.
"Ronald!"
There was a look of welcome on her face, and in her eyes and about her lips, and, as it seemed, in every curve and outline of her body, for which some men, to have had it appear for them, would nave given a good slice of their possessions. But Mr Ferguson seemed, positively, as if he would rather that it had not been there.
He seemed reluctant, even, to yield her one of his hands in exchange for both of hers.