“Oh, I say! You’re rather severe, you know! You were just a little thing running about underfoot!—I’m sorry you feel angry——”
“I do not. But how can I have anything to talk to you about, Mr. Trenor, when you have never even noticed me all these years, although often I have handed you your keys and your letters.”
“It was quite stupid of me. I’m sorry. But a man, you see, doesn’t notice children——”
“Some men do.”
“You mean Mr. Barres! That is unkind. Why rub it in, Dulcie? I’m rather an interesting fellow, after all.”
“Are you?” she asked absently.
Her honest indifference to him was perfectly apparent to Esmé Trenor. This would never do. She must be subdued, made sane, disciplined!
“Do you know,” he drawled, leaning lankly nearer, dropping both arms on the cloth, and fixing his heavy-lidded eyes intensely on her,“—do you know—do you guess, perhaps, why I never spoke to you in all these years?”
“You did not trouble yourself to speak to me, I imagine.”