After a tacit exchange of forgiveness, he said, “I am afraid I startled you. I was just coming for a book to read myself asleep with. I—”
“Not at all,” she returned. “I was just—” Then she did not say what, and he asked:
“Making some studies?”
“Yes,” she owned, with reluctant promptness.
“I mustn’t ask what,” he suggested, and he made an effort to smile away what seemed a painful perturbation in her as he went forward to look at the book-shelves, from which, till then, she had not slipped aside.
“I’m in your way,” she said, and he answered, “Not at all.” He added to the other sentence he had spoken, “If it’s going to be as good as what you gave us today—”
“You are very kind.” She hesitated, and then she said, abruptly: “What I did to-day owed everything to you, Mr. Verrian,” and while he desisted from searching the book-shelves, she stood looking anxiously at him, with the pulse in her neck visibly throbbing. Her agitation was really painful, but Verrian did not attribute it to her finding herself there alone with him at midnight; for though the other guests had all gone to bed, the house was awake in some of the servants, and an elderly woman came in presently bringing a breadth of silvery gauze, which she held up, asking if it was that.
“Not exactly, but it will do nicely, Mrs. Stager. Would you mind getting me the very pale-blue piece that electric blue?”