“Why, Dolly, is it you?” he exclaimed, gripping her gloved hand.
“Yes, Mr Trethowen; I—I don’t think I ought to have come here—to your chambers,” she replied, glancing round the room rather timidly; “but I wanted to tell you something.”
“Surely there’s no harm in interviewing the lion in his den, is there?” he asked, laughing. “Come, let me help you off with your cloak.”
At first she hesitated, declaring that she could only remain a few minutes, but eventually he persuaded her to allow him to remove the fur-lined garment—an Operation in which he displayed a rather excessive amount of care.
Then he drew up a cosy armchair to the fire, and as she seated herself in it she commenced a desultory conversation, evidently loth to touch upon the matter of importance that had brought her thither.
Men at Hugh Trethowen’s age are impressionable. They love, hate, and forget all in one day. For a brief period one fair daughter of Eve is thought enchanting and divine, but in the majority of cases another, fairer still, whose charms are increasingly bewitching, steps in and usurps her place, and she, though tender and fair—she may go anywhere to hide her emotion from an unsympathetic world, and heal her broken heart.
If the truth were told, as she fixed her sweet, affectionate eyes upon him, he was reflecting whether he really loved her in preference to Valérie.
“Why do you desire so particularly to see me?” he asked, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips, and regarding her with a happy and somewhat amused expression.
Blushing, and dropping her eyes to the floor, she began to pick at her skirt.
“I hope you’ll not be angry with me, and also that you’ll keep my visit a secret,” she said at last, with a little demure droop in the corners of her mouth, and just a suspicion of diablerie in her eye. “I want to tell you of some one with whom you are acquainted.”