“What can I do?” he asked despondently, gazing sadly into the fire. “I love her with all my heart and soul, as you are aware, yet what can I do?”
“Why, marry her all the same,” cried a musical voice gayly, and as we both jumped up, startled, we were surprised to find Dora herself standing in the doorway, laughing at our discomfiture.
“You!” cried Jack, gladly rushing forward and grasping her hand. “How did you get in?”
“I forbade your woman to announce me, because I wanted to surprise you,” she laughed. “But I—I had no idea that Mr Ridgeway was with you. She ought to have told me,” she added, blushing.
“I’m surely not such a formidable person, am I?” I asked.
“Well, no,” she answered. Then looking round the little book-lined room rather timidly, she said, “I don’t know that I ought to have come here, but I wanted to see Jack. I’m supposed to be at Mabel’s, dining. I drove there in the brougham, and then came along here in a cab.”
“Won’t you sit down?” her lover asked. “Now you are here we must try and make you as cosy as possible, providing you’ll excuse the Bohemianism of my quarters.”
“Why apologise, Jack?” she asked, as he unclasped her cape, revealing her handsome dinner-dress cut a trifle décolleté. “If Ma will not let us meet openly, then we must see each other surreptitiously.”
“Well spoken,” I exclaimed, laughing, and when she had seated herself in Jack’s armchair, with her little satin shoes placed coquettishly upon the fender, she told us how she had ingeniously arranged with her sister to return to Eaton Square in a cab, and then drive home in the carriage, as if she had been spending the whole evening with Mabel.
We laughed, and as I sat gazing at her, memories of Sybil, the woman I had loved and lost, crowded upon me. Even though Lady Stretton’s consent was withheld, they were nevertheless happy in each other’s love. The love-look upon their faces told me how intense was the passion between them, and I envied my friend his happiness. Dora was indeed as charming to the sight as eyes could desire. Her bare shoulders, well set-off by her black bespangled dress trimmed with pale-green chiffon, were a trifle narrow, but that lent her a childish grace, and it was the one fault that could be found with her; all the rest was perfect, and the greatest charm of all that, unlike her sister, she was totally unconscious of her loveliness.