'I hope you have missed me,' he says with a tender glance, pushing aside her trailing skirts that he may gain room for his huge person. 'I assure you the time those men spent over their wine was actionable; while I was tantalised by dreams of fair women the entire two hours.'
'Two hours! What an exaggeration. Why, by Aunt Isabel's watch, that was never known to lose a minute, it was only half an hour.'
'What to me was two hours, to you was but a fourth of the time. How cruel an interpretation may be put upon your words! And I have been buoying myself up with the hope while absent from you, that when we _did_ meet again, I should hear something kind from your lips.'
'And so you shall,' says Miss Mordaunt, bestowing upon him a radiant smile, just to let 'that woman' see she is not pining for the recreant Frank. But unfortunately for the success of the thing, Mrs Leyton is looking the other way, and does not see it at all, while Frank Halkett does.
'Must I confess to you? Well, then, my accurate knowledge of the hour arose from my incessant glances at the watch, to see if your delay in coming was really as long as it appeared--to _me_.'
'If I thought you _meant_ that'--begins Blake hesitatingly, with a sudden gleam in his eyes (what man but feels more valiant after dinner than before?)--'if I really thought you meant it'----
'Well--"if you _really_ thought I meant it"--what would you do then? But no!' she cries hastily, seeing she has gone rather far, and unwilling to bring matters to a climax--'do not tell me; I do not wish to know. My ignorance in this case no doubt is blissful; I prefer to remain in it.--And now to change the subject. Who is Mrs Leyton? and what do you know about her? I am all curiosity where she is concerned.'
'Do you like her?' asks Blake, merely as a precautionary measure.
'I can't say I do--exactly,' replies the Irish girl candidly. 'Now tell me where you first met her.'
'In India. Her husband was alive when I first became acquainted with her. He lived tremendously hard; but he was devoted to her, without doubt, and she to him; and she took his death awfully badly. Never saw a woman so cut up by anything before; they generally take it pretty sensibly after the first shock, but she didn't; and went to a skeleton in less than three months.'