Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/355

 "Have you seen Elsa?" I asked presently, and perhaps rather abruptly.

"Yes," she said, "I was presented to her. She was very sweet and kind to me."

"She's that to me too," I said, rising and standing by her chair.

She hesitated a moment, then looked up at me; I saw emotion in her eyes.

"You'll be happy with her?" she asked.

"If she isn't very unhappy, I daresay I shan't be."

"Ah!" she said with a sort of despairing sigh.

"But I don't suppose I should make anybody particularly happy."

"Yes, yes," she cried in low-voiced impetuosity. "Yes, if" She stopped. Fear was in her eyes now, and she scanned my face with a close jealous intensity. I knew what her fear was, her own expression of it echoed back across the years. She feared that she had given me occasion to laugh at her. I bent down, took her hand, and kissed it lightly.

"Perhaps, had all the world been different," said I, with a smile.

"I'm terribly changed?"

"No; not terribly, and not much. How has it been with you?"

Her nervousness seemed to be passing off; she answered me in a sincere simplicity that would neither exaggerate nor hide.

"All that is good, short of the best," she said. "And with you?"

"Shall I say all that is bad, short of the worst?"

"We shouldn't mean very different things."

"No; not very. I've done many foolish things."