Morbid fancies are realities to a man like me.
Remember the doctor’s words, Loring. Think of a new face, seen in your house!
Think of a look that searched my heart for the first time!”
Lord Loring glanced once more at the clock on the mantel-piece.
The hands pointed to the dinner hour.
“Miss Eyrecourt?” he whispered.
“Yes; Miss Eyrecourt.”
The library door was thrown open by a servant. Stella herself entered the room.
CHAPTER VIII. THE PRIEST OR THE WOMAN?
LORD LORING hurried away to his dressing room.
“I won’t be more than ten minutes,” he said—and left Romayne and Stella together.
She was attired with her customary love of simplicity.
White lace was the only ornament on her dress of delicate silvery gray.
Her magnificent hair was left to plead its own merits, without adornment of any sort.
Even the brooch which fastened her lace pelerine was of plain gold only.
Conscious that she was showing her beauty to the greatest advantage in the eyes of a man of taste, she betrayed a little of the embarrassment which Romayne had already noticed at the moment when she gave him her hand.
They were alone, and it was the first time she had seen him in evening dress.
It may be that women have no positive appreciation of what is beautiful in form and color—or it may be that they have no opinions of their own when the laws of fashion have spoken. This at least is certain, that not one of them in a thousand sees anything objectionable in the gloomy and hideous evening costume of a gentleman in the nineteenth century.
A handsome man is, to their eyes, more seductive than ever in the contemptible black coat and the stiff white cravat which he wears in common with the servant who waits on him at table.
After a stolen glance at Romayne, Stella lost all confidence in herself—she began turning over the photographs on the table.
The momentary silence which followed their first greeting became intolerable to her.
Rather than let it continue, she impulsively confessed the uppermost idea in her mind when she entered the room.
“I thought I heard my name when I came in,” she said.
“Were you and Lord Loring speaking of me?”
Romayne owned without hesitation that they had been speaking of her.
She smiled and turned over another photograph.
But when did sun-pictures ever act as a restraint on a woman’s curiosity?
The words passed her lips in spite of her. “I suppose I mustn’t ask what you were saying?”
It was impossible to answer this plainly without entering into explanations from which Romayne shrank.
He hesitated.
She turned over another photograph.
“I understand,” she said.
“You were talking of my faults.”
She paused, and stole another look at him.
“I will try to correct my faults, if you will tell me what they are.”
Romayne felt that he had no alternative but to tell the truth—under certain reserves.
“Indeed you are wrong,” he said. “We were talking of the influence of a tone or a look on a sensitive person.”
“The influence on Me?” she asked.
“No.
The influence which You might exercise on another person.”
She knew perfectly well that he was speaking of himself. But she was determined to feel the pleasure of making him own it.
“If I have any such influence as you describe,” she began, “I hope it is for good?”
“Certainly for good.”
“You speak positively, Mr. Romayne.
Almost as positively—only that can hardly be—as if you were speaking from experience.”
He might still have evaded a direct reply, if she had been content with merely saying this. But she looked at him while she spoke. He answered the look.
“Shall I own that you are right?” he said.
“I was thinking of my own experience yesterday.”
She returned to the photographs.
“It sounds impossible,” she rejoined, softly. There was a pause.