"Oh, no," said she, still rather surprised. "Towards the end of the season the red fish are really not worth landing."
"It seems a long time since then," he said. "I find myself sitting up at night and thinking over all those experiences—making pictures of them—and the hours go by in a most astonishing fashion. Here in London, among the November fogs, it seems so strange to think of those splendid days and the long, clear twilights. I suppose it is all so well known to you, you do not trouble to recall it; but I do—it is like a dream—only that I see everything so distinctly—I seem almost to be able to touch each leaf of the bushes in the little dell where we used to have luncheon; do you remember?"
"Above the Geinig Pool?—oh, yes!" she said, smiling.
"And the Junction Pool," he continued, with a curious eagerness,
as if he were claiming her sympathy, her interest, on account of that old companionship—"I can make the clearest vision of it as I sit up all by myself at night—you remember the little bush on the opposite side that you used sometimes to catch your fly on, and the shelf of shingle going suddenly down into the brown water—I always thought that was a dangerous place. And how well you used to fish the Rock Pool! Old Robert used to be so proud of you! Once, at the tail of the Rock Pool, you wound up, and said to him, 'Well, I can't do any better than that, Robert;' and then he said, 'No man ever fished that pool better—oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Honnor; no one at all ever fished that pool better.' I suppose Strathaivron is nothing to you—you must be so familiar with it—but to me it is a sort of wonderland, to dream of when I am all by myself at night—"
Alas! it was at this very moment that Nina came up from her room; Clara, the innkeeper's daughter, had to go on immediately after the ball-room scene was over. And Nina, as she came by, caught sight of these two, and for a moment she stood still, her eyes staring. The two figures were in a sort of twilight—a twilight as compared with the glare of the stage beyond them, but there were lights here quite sufficient to illumine their features; it was no imagination on Nina's part—she saw with a startling clearness that Lionel was regarding this tall, English-looking girl with a look she had never seen him direct towards any woman before—a timid, wistful, half-beseeching look that needed no words to explain its meaning. For a second Nina stood there, paralyzed—not daring to breathe—not able to move. Yet was it altogether a revelation to her, or only a sudden and overwhelming confirmation of certain half-frightened misgivings which had visited her from time to time, and which she had striven hard to banish? The next moment Nina had passed on silently, like a ghost, and had disappeared in the dusk behind some scenery.
"When shall you be back in Strathaivron, Miss Honnor?" he asked.
"In the spring, I suppose, for the salmon-fishing," she made answer.
"You will be up there in the clear April days, by the side of that beautiful river, and I shall be playing the mountebank here, among the London gas and fog."
But at this moment the orchestra began the slow music that intimated the resumption of the minuet, and this recalled him to his senses; he had hurriedly to take leave of her, and then he went and rejoined Miss Burgoyne, who merely said, "Well, that's a pretty trick!" as she gave him her hand for the dance.