"Are you not well?" she asked at length, timidly.
He started. "Why do you ask?"
"You look pale," she answered.
For a moment he did not speak. Then he said, "I have had a disappointment,
Edith."
She leaned toward him with a sigh and a hand half extended, compassion in all her attitude.
He took the hand, and rose. "Let me tell you all, dear," he said. "I need comfort. Come and let me tell you,—if it will not be a bore,"
She went at once, pain and delight struggling together in her heart. He led her to the sofa, and sank down to the cushion at her feet, bowing his head to her knees. And there he poured out his whole story, sparing her nothing.
Perhaps an instinct of justice and mercy ran through his passion. Perhaps, guessing in the soft, tremulous, soothing hands that touched his hair and forehead the love that he had believed to be dead, and with an unconscious feeling that she was to be the consoler and companion of his future life, he felt also that all the pain she was to suffer for this love of his must be gone through with now.
He could not understand that her only pain was for him, and that for herself she was blest. For she had his confidence, and she could console him.
From that night he became her constant escort and companion. He wrote a brief note in answer to Mrs. Lindsay's, and then he seemed to forget that he knew any one in Palazzo Pesaro.