But Dankmere merely fled to the backyard and remained there all the afternoon smoking his head off; and it was several days before Jessie had an opportunity to find herself alone in his vicinity and to ask him with almost perfect self-possession where he had found the photograph.
"I stole it," said Dankmere, turning bright red to his ear-tips.
"All she could think of to say was: 'Why?'
"It resembles my wife. So do you."
"Really," she said coldly.
Several days later she learned by the skilfully careless questioning of Quarren that the Countess of Dankmere had not existed on earth for the last ten years.
This news extenuated the Earl's guilt in her eyes to a degree which permitted a slight emotion resembling pity to pervade her. And one day she said to him, casually pleasant—"Would you care for that post-card, Lord Dankmere? If it resembles your wife I would be very glad to return it to you."
Dankmere, painfully red again, thanked her so nicely that the slight, instinctive distrust and aversion which, in the beginning, she had entertained for his lordship, suddenly disappeared so entirely that it surprised her when she had leisure to think it over afterward.
So she gave him the post-card, and next day she found a rose in a glass of water on her desk; and that ended the incident for them both except that Dankmere was shyer of her than ever and she was beginning to realise that his aloof and expressionless deportment was due to shyness—which seemed to be inexplicable because otherwise timidity was scarcely the word to characterise his lively little lordship.