She _was_ a sweet woman. For weeks now she had heard harsh rumors and evil things of him that made her heart ache, but she had given no sign, nor would she have ever done so had not her friends goaded her to the point. She hears the light footstep coming along the corridor toward her, and she knows that it comes this morning at her especial call. She sees the bonny face and feels the light kiss on her cheek. Heaven forgive her if she inwardly wonder if these lips she loves have last rested on another woman's face!
"Roy," she says, stealing up to him and laying one of her lovely round arms about his neck, "tell me, dear, if you have ceased to love me--if you would rather--rather break our engagement? Because, dear, better a parting now, before it is too late, than a lifelong misery afterward." There are tears in the blue bewitching eyes, and tears in the gentle voice that he is not slow to feel.
"Florence"--the young man catches her in his arms--"who has--What do you mean? I have not ceased to love you." All the fair fascination that has made her so dear to him in the past rushes over him now to her rescue.
"Then, Roy, why, why--Oh, I cannot say it!" Her pretty head, gold like his own, falls on his shoulder.
"Look up, love." He is not a coward, whatever else. "You mean to say, 'Why do I, a man professing to love one woman, constantly seek the society of another?' Do not you?"
She bows her head, her white lids droop. There is a pause so long that the ticking of the little clock on the mantel seems a noise in the stillness. He puts her out of his arms, rises, picks up a newspaper, throws it down, and says, "God help me! I don't know." Then another pause; and now the ticking of the little clock is fairly riotous. "Florence, love," kneeling by her, "bear with me. It's a fascination, an infatuation--an intellectual disloyalty to you, if you will--but it is nothing more, and it must die out soon."
Lady Dering was a charming woman: all her friends agreed upon that point, and also upon another--that an invitation to visit Stokeham Park was equivalent to a guarantee for so many days of unalloyed pleasure. It was a grand old place, not quite three hours from town, with winding broad avenues and glimpses of sweeping smooth lawns between the oaks and beeches. And the company which the mistress of Stokeham had gathered about her this autumn was, if possible, a more congenial and yet varied one than usual. Having no children of her own, Lady Dering enjoyed especially the society of young people, and generally contrived to have a goodly number of them about her--Mildred and Mabel Masham, Lady Isobel French, Lady Florence Ffolliott, her cousin the little Viscount Harleigh--who was very far gone in love with his uncle's daughter, by the by--the Hon. Hugh Leroy Chandoce and a host of others.