The young journalist looked at her kindly. He remembered his own too short-lived romance. That whisper had come straight from her heart.
“Ah, that is for you,” he said. “You know, you confessed you were a little doubtful about how he would look upon it. Will you ask Lady Mary to write him the news, or would you rather that I should?”
Isobel interrupted him eagerly. “Oh, would you? Lady Mary is a darling, and devoted to us both. But if I write to her, and she has to write to Guy, it may be ages before we meet. And, besides,” she added with the unconscious guile of a woman, “in certain things, men are so much better diplomatists than women. I am sure you could put everything from a reasonable point of view, present everything in quite a favourable light. I do not want him to think I am a masculine sort of person, an enlightened female who goes tearing about all over the world after a man she loves.”
Moreno was a very kind-hearted fellow. He could not resist that wistful look in the beautiful dark eyes. The girl was alone in the world. She had just lost her father; Guy was now her sheet-anchor.
“I say, if you want to see him quickly, why not send a note round to the Embassy, just giving him your address, and saying simply, ‘I am here’?”
But Isobel rather shrank from that. It seemed too bold, perhaps a little unmaidenly. She had always been educated in the belief that a woman should never make advances. Advances might be made through a third party, perhaps, if they were made with discretion.
“But you could explain it all so much better than I could, Mr Moreno, how the whole thing was led up to by your letter to Lady Mary.”
Moreno looked at his watch. “I was going to leave Madrid in half an hour. Well, I can catch a train three hours later, it won’t make much difference. I will be off at once to the Embassy, and catch Rossett there, if not, at his flat. You, of course, can see him at any time, to-day or to-morrow?”
“A thousand thanks,” replied Isobel, with her charming smile. “Yes, I shall not stir out much anyway. But I will keep in the two whole days.”
“Mrs Godwin, I warn you, will insist on showing you the sights of Madrid.”