Camilla bit her lip, and moved a little away from him, approaching the fire in her turn.
"How good you are!" she said. The words were wrung from her involuntarily, and there were tears in her eyes and tears in her voice. Indeed, he moved her sharply at this moment.
There was such an element of simplicity about him and yet no weakness. He accepted her story without question. The flimsy fabrication she had just given him was merely the truth to him, essentially so because it was she who spoke. No other man she knew would have been deceived by this story of a friend in the country, but Rupert was not like all these other men. He was very far removed from being a fool, but he was a long, long way from grasping the meaning of life as it was lived by most of the men and women who circled about him now.
Why, he was in many things a child compared to herself!...
Haverford had set down to his writing-table.
"In any matter of this kind," he said, "I beg you will use me in every way that may seem good to you, Mrs. Lancing. I gather that your friend needs immediate help; pray do not let her be troubled an hour longer than is possible."
He signed a blank cheque, and slipped it into an envelope.
As he turned and held this out to her, Camilla Lancing gave a little shiver. She looked at him without taking the envelope.
"Oh!" she murmured, "I ... am half afraid to take this! I came ... on ... on the impulse of the moment, not because you have so much ... but because I ... felt ... I feel you are so glad to--to help any one but...."
"Why should there be any 'but'?" he asked, not very steadily; "by this time I hope you know that I hold it one of my greatest pleasures, as it is certainly an honour, to serve you whenever you will permit me to do so. Will you remember this always?..."
Camilla bit her lip again, and then put out her hand.
Haverford bent over it and kissed it. Her hand was kissed at least once or twice a day on the average but Rupert Haverford had never before permitted himself this old-fashioned and gracious sign of homage. It was with him an expression of something far, far deeper than mere courtesy to a very delightful and very pretty woman. She divined this instantly, and her heart began to beat nervously. As he released her hand she pulled her sables about her and prepared to go. She wanted to be away from him. The expression of his face troubled her. She had chafed almost angrily at his silence, his self-repression, yet now that she knew he would speak she dreaded to hear his words.