"By no means, Guy Elersley and I have ceased to be strangers from the first moment we met. But this can not interest you. Let us talk of something else. Do you enjoy the last of the season here?"
"Very much indeed," he replied, but without the slightest warmth, as he was inwardly wondering at this girl's conduct, so different from the others. At this stage of his critical distraction, his friend rose and shook hands with Madame d'Alberg, then advanced to make his adieux to Honor. This necessitated Vivian's doing so likewise, and if ever Vivian Standish's hand clasped another's emphatically, it did on this occasion. He just gathered the soft white fingers of this strange haughty girl within his own, and held them for an instant in that trusting longing way that had done him good service many a time before, then he laid them quietly away, with a look of eloquent pleading in his eyes and a simple "Good-bye" on his handsome lips.
It was six o'clock at last. The gas was lit, the curtains drawn, and the familiar and just now welcome sound of dishes was coming from the dining-room across the hall. Mr. Rayne was expected every minute, and Mrs. d'Alberg and Honor were loitering the moments of waiting around the drawing-room.
"Well, aunt Jean," said Honor, lazily placing her hand on the back of the arm-chair in which the lady addressed was seated, (she had chosen to call her "aunt" since she was to appear in society as her charge), "what do you propose doing to-night? Do you care at all to go to the Bellemare's?"
"Oh, I don't know," Mrs. d'Alberg replied, "one place is as attractive as another for me. You will see plenty of people and nonsense, and you may as well be wearied all at once with these things as to foster the spirit by degrees. You will meet Miss Mountainhead or Miss Dash, or Miss Reid some of these days, and if you can't talk about this one's 'kettledrum' and that one's 'at home' you will be bored to death by hearing their version of it, so you might as well do one thing as the other. You'll see that Mr. Standish too, by-the-way! Do you know, I like him, Honor, it is a stamp you seldom see."
"Really, aunt Jean," Honor was smiling, "this looks suspicious. You should be blind to your favorite stamps by now. But about this other thing, since we've accepted we had better go, as you say, boring one's self to death, or being bored by other people is much the same thing, so we may as well resign ourselves and make the best of it."
* * * * *
Vivian Standish was puzzled more than ever when he left Mr. Rayne's house. He had counted on meeting an ordinary society girl, but had been greatly, though not at all unpleasantly disappointed.
He did not dislike Honor Edgeworth in any way. He felt rather attracted towards her than otherwise, but he felt uneasy about the little plans he had cherished and encouraged for so long.
An hour or so after leaving her, he was in his own room, comfortably installed in an easy chair drawn up to the window, with his velvet slippers resting on the sill and the graceful clouds of smoke curling upwards from his handsome mouth and surrounding his languid form. There is not very much to look at from the window of a Bank street boarding house, and yet a passer-by at this moment would have thought this elegant young man was deeply interested either in the dilapidated representations of "Hazel Kirke" that adorned a straggling fence opposite, or in the music (?) which a classic looking organ-grinder was trying to eke out of his instrument to the time of the "Marseillaise," to the great delight of the customary crowd of youngsters who surrounded him.