“My dear, I do that already. I am drawn to you as I never was before to a—”
“A stranger you would say?”
“Yes, and no—for, after all, you are my cousin's child and that means much to me.”
Madame Dennie appeared a trifle helpless and as though she was incapable of meeting these advances. A repellent feeling—a wish to keep from close friendships had grown up in her heart—springing from the sure consciousness that she stood in need of sympathy and love and would be weakly dependent upon it once it was hers; but fearing always that she might tell those things her mind most fed upon, she shrank from intimacies.
Mrs. Perkins vacated her chair, and said with a trace of self-denial in her voice: “I shall let you dress now.”
With this she quitted the room and joined young Perkins in the library. She found him standing on a corner of the hearth-rug, lost in meditation.
“I hope she is all right, mother,” he said.
“Oh, yes—she will be down presently.”
“Is she much of a stunner by daylight?” he inquired.
“I wish you would be more select in your expressions, Ballard. She is a woman of the greatest elegance.”