“Richard, mon cher, and are you glad to see me?”
She spoke very softly to him, as she turned aside and walked a little unsteadily to a settle standing by the harpsichord. Jeffray felt a great flush of shame and a miserable sense of reluctance that made him gauche and clumsy. He followed her as though under compulsion, and sat down beside her on the settle.
“Of course I am glad to see you, Jilian,” he said.
Miss Hardacre’s hands were fidgeting in her lap. She had prepared a gay and airy part, but all her brave impudence and coquetry seemed to have deserted her. She was too conscious of her ugliness; the inspiration of vanity was dead within her. The pretty puppet could no longer ply her fan, flash her gray eyes, simper, and show her teeth. She seemed to realize of a sudden that courteous pity alone could make a man look kindly at her face. Jeffray’s first stare had told her that.
“I have been very ill, Richard,” she said, almost humbly, looking at him a moment as for sympathy, and then lowering her eyes.
Jeffray was sitting very stiffly on the settle, looking like a man who had been offered a cup of poison or the renunciation of his faith.
“I know; I am sorry; it was all my fault,” he answered her.
There was a lack of tone and of vitality about the reply that made Jilian shrink.
“I am not what I was, Richard,” she said, pressing her handkerchief against her lips and leaving a vermilion stain on the cambric; “no doubt you find me greatly changed.”
Her eyes challenged him with the shallow despair of a vain woman. Jeffray reddened, and could not meet her look as he stammered out feeble contradictions.