Lanyard's expression took on another shade of patience. "Time enough to think about that after I've called at my rooms to collect some belongings."
"But"--Folly held fast to his arm, with a little frown of solicitude to excuse her persistence--"if you feel so sure Morphew means mischief--"
"Do you need more proof than you've had tonight?"
"Then surely he'll have set somebody to watch the house already--"
"The front of it, yes. Precisely why I'm anxious to get away before he can set spies to guard the rear. If you have no objection, I shall leave by these windows after putting out the lamp."
"But why?" Folly adorably pouted. "You're safe enough here."
"Madame will forgive if I make so bold as to question that." She let fall her lovely lashes to deny Lanyard's meaning smile, but still held on. "And every minute I linger makes the danger outside more real."
"Madame is generous to a fault. She forgets the world is never broad-minded. There are the servants to be considered, the neighbours--"
"A lot I care what people think, it's you I'm thinking of!"
Suffused with facile sentiment, the face at Lanyard's shoulder was that of an exquisite and ingenuous child, vibrant with glad recognition of a world whose wonder and beauty had till that moment been all unsuspected. And the worst of it was, she knew it . . . No: the real worst of it was that it wasn't art, it wasn't put on, she wasn't coquetting, actually she was stirred to the depths of her being and meant with all of her every lovely nuance of her looks. Even Lanyard knew an instant when nothing in life seemed more desirous than those lambent eyes and the yielding mouth whose lips trembled with her hastened breathing. . . .
But an instant only; in another he got himself in hand again and steeled his heart to cruel kindness. It went against nature to hurt her; but the hurt would not bite deep, its tonic pang would leave no scar. Not for the first time did life now give him proof of the readiness of a nature emotionally shallow and impressionable to succumb to the glamour of his ill-fame as a romantic rogue.
"Madame," said he with genuine reluctance, "would be so much wiser to think first of herself always."
She argued with a rebellious face: "But I can't help it--can I?--if it's you I must think of first."