“Come in,” said Embrance; but the words died away on her lips as she recognised the figure in the doorway, whose shoulders towered above the little handmaiden.
“Mr. Horace Meade.”
There was no sign of eccentricity in Horace’s appearance; even Mrs. Rakely might have been satisfied. He wore a dark, grey coat, and in his hand he carried a hat which was scrupulously glossy and well brushed. When he spoke his manner and voice were very quiet, much of the fun seemed to have died out of him during his sojourn in Italy, and his first remark was commonplace to the last degree.
“I heard from Mrs. Rakely that you had met with an accident. I am exceedingly sorry; I called to inquire how you were before I leave town.”
“You are going away for some time, I suppose?” asked Embrance, when she had invited her visitor to sit down. He took a chair by the window, and seemed interested in the growth of some ferns that Joan had sent from her garden.
“I hardly know. I have several portraits on hand that must be finished as soon as possible. But my studio is not habitable yet; it is being painted, and the workpeople are lamentably slow. When these commissions are disposed of, I may go away for several months, perhaps I shall get as far as Constantinople.”
“I have often thought that Constantinople must be a most interesting city to visit.”
“Oh, very; it is so beautifully situated; there is no other place quite like it.”
“No, I have never seen any place like it.” (“I suppose,” Embrance was thinking while she uttered her brilliant remark, “that he was offended at my writing to him.”)
“I was a fool to come at all,” said Horace to himself, “but I wanted to see her once more; she looks horribly ill.”