CHAPTER X
LONELINESS
"While I! I sat alone and watched;
My lot in life, to live alone,
In mine own world of interests,
Much felt, but little shown."
—Christina Rossetti.
Yes; Elsie felt as if she were left out in the cold, and she looked as if she felt it.
There are women to whom nature has granted the gift of silent emotion. They have mobile faces, changeful eyes, soft lips, which express joy or desolation naturally, and with the charm of perfect simplicity and truth. These women keep their youth a long time; every experience of life comes to them with the freshness of a first feeling; they retain the capacity to rejoice and suffer to the very end of their days. Men like them, because they find them real, and because these impressionable characters have the attraction of varying often. Anything is more tolerable than monotony.
Arnold Wayne looked from Mrs. Verdon to Elsie, and read a pathetic story in her brown eyes.
"May I introduce myself, Miss Kilner?" he said. "I have heard of you so often from Mr. Lennard."
This was a fib. For years he had not seen or heard anything of the rector; but it was a fib which slipped from him unawares. He had wished for an introduction to Elsie when he had seen her at the picture gallery with the old clergyman, and he had secretly anathematised Mr. Lennard's obtuseness. He was not going to lose a second chance, he said to himself.