“You don’t look well,” she said after they had greeted each other.
“I am quite well,” he answered, with evident constraint.
“I haven’t seen you to speak to since that little note of yours.”
A very faint colour rose in his faded cheeks.
“After Miss Schley’s first night?” he murmured.
“Do you know that your son told me you would write?” she continued.
She was leaning back in her chair, half hidden by the curtain of the box.
Sir Donald’s voice was almost sharp and startling.
“How should he--you spoke about me then?”
There was a flash of light in his pale, almost colourless eyes.
“I wondered where you had gone, and he said you would write next day.”
“Suspicious! No--but Leo does not understand me very well. I was rather old when he was born, and I have never been able to be much with him. He was educated in England, and my duties of course lay abroad.”
He paused, looking at her and moving his thin white moustache. Then, in an uneasy voice, he added:
“You must not take my character altogether from Leo.”
“Nor you mine altogether from Miss Schley,” said Lady Holme.
She scarcely knew why she said it. She thought herself stupid, ridiculous almost, for saying it. Yet she could not help speaking. Perhaps she relied on Sir Donald’s age. Or perhaps--but who knows why a woman is cautious or incautious in moments the least expected? God guides her, perhaps, or the devil--or merely a bottle imp. Men never know, and that is why they find her adorable.
Sir Donald said nothing for a moment, only made the familiar movement with his hands that was a sign in him of concealed excitement or emotion. His eyes were fixed upon the ledge of the box. Lady Holme was puzzled by his silence and, at last, was on the point of making a remark on some other subject--Plancon’s singing--when he spoke, like a man who had made up his mind firmly to take an unusual, perhaps a difficult course.
“I wish to take it from you,” he said. “Give me the right one, not an imitation of an imitation.”
She knew at once what he meant and was surprised. Had Leo Ulford been talking?
“Lady Holme,” he went on, “I am taking a liberty. I know that. It’s a thing I have never done before, knowingly. Don’t think me unconscious of what I am doing. But I am an old man, and old men can sometimes venture--allowance is sometimes made for them. I want to claim that allowance now for what I am going to say.”