“I can’t tell what it is, Louisa, that draws me so to that girl,” he remarked one day to Lady Pell. “It’s not her good looks, though they are undeniable; and it’s not her musical abilities, admirable as they are; it’s a charm, a something altogether indefinable and elusive, to which, if I were to try for an hour, I don’t think I could give its proper name. Both her eyes and her voice seem to haunt me; it is as if I had seen the one and heard the other in some prior state of existence. At times they affect me in the strangest possible way.”
“I don’t wonder at your being taken by Ethel Thursby,” returned Lady Pell. “She is a dear girl, and I should like to have kept her with me always; but her aunts would only lend her to me for a time. In one sense I shall be quite sorry when Beilby, my ordinary companion, is well enough to resume her duties.”
“You must not let her go yet awhile, Louisa. And yet, the longer she stays, the harder it will seem to part from her when the time comes.”
“There is some one besides you and me, unless I am very much mistaken, who will find it harder still to part from her when the time comes.”
“And who may that be, pray?”
“That very nice secretary of yours, Mr. Everard Lisle.”
“Lisle! You don’t mean to say——”
“I mean to say that he’s over head and ears in love with Ethel Thursby.”
“You astonish me. I have remarked nothing.”
“Of course not. It was not to be expected. You are only a poor purblind man. Now, I have been sure of it for some time; indeed, I began to have my suspicions almost from the first time they met. I confess that I watch the progress of the little comedy, out of a corner of my eye, with a good deal of interest. I like to see a man in earnest, and that’s what young Lisle evidently is.”