Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/267

"It is good of you," she said tremulously; "won't you sit down?"

He did not heed her invitation, but shot a shrewd glance at her. Her voice startled him; the discomposure of her appearance arrested his eyes. He wondered what had happened. It could not be that his visit was the cause of this confusion. And yet he noted it with a thrill of satisfaction, such as he had experienced in the colloquy at Mrs. Charters's.

"You are very good to look at like this," he allowed himself to say. He picked up the thread of their communion where it had been dropped earlier that day. She was marvellously handsome; he had never admired a woman so much since his youth. The faint light spreading from the lamps illumined her brilliant face and threw up her figure in a kind of twilight against the wall.

Her heart palpitated audibly; it seemed to her that she had a sudden unreasonable desire to laugh. The squalid gloom of that chamber beyond lifted; it seemed remote and accidental. She was here with the comfortable eyes of this man upon her, contemplating her with admiration. She was not a parcel of that tragedy outside. She smiled broadly.

"Why, the better for my salon," she said.

What had excited her? he asked himself. "Ah! we will arrange all that," he answered with a familiar nod.

"You will?" she asked eagerly breathlessly.

"Why, certainly," he replied. "I think we can manage it between us."

She laughed aloud this time. "Yes, both of us together," she said.

He met her eyes. Was it wine? he asked. Or was it——? Lord Hambleton's body tingled with sensation. He had not suspected that matters had progressed so intimately between them.