“Vera,” I said in a low tone, “tell me what is amiss. What has happened? why do you look so worried?”
We were alone, and the door was closed.
She looked up, and her eyes met mine. Her lips parted as if she were about to speak, then they shut tightly. Suddenly she bit her lip, and her big, expressive eyes filled with tears.
“Vera,” I said very gently, sinking down beside her, for I felt a strange affinity between us—an affinity of soul, “What is it? What’s the matter? Tell me, dear. I won’t tell a soul.”
I couldn’t help it. My arm stole round her waist and my lips touched her cold forehead. Had she sprung away from me, turned upon me with flaming eyes and boxed my ears even, I should have been less surprised than at what happened, for never before had I taken such a liberty. Instead, she turned her pretty head, sank with a sigh upon my shoulder, and an instant later her arms encircled my neck. She was sobbing bitterly, so terribly that I feared she was about to become hysterical.
“Oh, Mr Ashton!” she burst out, “oh, if you only knew!”
“Knew what?” I whispered. “Tell me. I won’t breathe it to a single living person.”
“But that’s it,” she exclaimed as she still wept bitterly. “I don’t know—but I suspect—I fear something so terribly, and yet I don’t know what it is!”
This was an enigma I had not looked for.
“What is going to happen?” I asked, more to say something, anything, than to sit there speechless and supine.