‘Sleeping soundly,’ said Paula.
‘That’s a blessing. I have not been to bed. I came in late, and have now come down to know if I had not better take your place?’
‘Nobody is required, I think. But you can judge for yourself.’
Up to this point they had conversed in the doorway of the sitting-room, which De Stancy now entered, crossing it to Charlotte’s apartment. He came out from the latter at a pensive pace.
‘She is doing well,’ he said gently. ‘You have been very good to her. Was the chair I saw by her bed the one you have been sitting in all night?’
‘I sometimes sat there; sometimes here.’
‘I wish I could have sat beside you, and held your hand—I speak frankly.’
‘To excess.’
‘And why not? I do not wish to hide from you any corner of my breast, futile as candour may be. Just Heaven! for what reason is it ordered that courtship, in which soldiers are usually so successful, should be a failure with me?’
‘Your lack of foresight chiefly in indulging feelings that were not encouraged. That, and my uncle’s indiscreet permission to you to travel with us, have precipitated our relations in a way that I could neither foresee nor avoid, though of late I have had apprehensions that it might come to this. You vex and disturb me by such words of regret.’