“I’m very glad—for now I know better what to do. I’d forgotten his wife.”
Frank went away, and presently Mr. Farley, despairing to stay the others out, rose also. Shaking hands with Hilda, he asked when he might come again. In the agitation of her talk with Frank she had completely forgotten his proposal; but now, with a sudden passion for self-sacrifice, it seemed neither grotesque nor impossible. Indeed, if she accepted, it would solve many difficulties, and she determined not to put aside the offer, as at first she intended, but to think it over. At least, she must do nothing rashly.
“I will write to you to-morrow,” she answered gravely,
He smiled and pressed her hand affectionately, already with somewhat the fervour of an accepted lover. Mrs. Murray was left alone with Basil. He turned over the pages of a book, and the trivial action, indicating to her excited temper a callousness which was not his, filled her with anger, so that for an instant, on account of all the pain he caused her, she hated him furiously.
“Is that a very interesting work?” she asked coldly.
He flung it aside with impatience.
“I thought that man was never going. It makes me angry each time I see him here. Are you very much attached to him?”
“What an extraordinary question!” she answered coolly. “I wonder why on earth you ask it?”
“Because I love you,” he burst out impulsively, “and I hate anyone else to be with you.”
She stared at him with the utmost calm, and some icy power seized her, so that she felt absolutely no emotion.