Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/106

 me! Don't you see the thing is going too far?" And, indeed, by this time, she suspected that if the Englishman sat upon the bench with her and Arturo Liana looked on from a distance, she might be, for almost the first time in her life, more interested in the man at her side.

In her musings upon his unexampled behaviour, she sometimes murmured her thoughts, or even spoke them aloud; and thus, one afternoon, as she sat with her mother in the ancient cell that had been made into a small salon for them, she said dreamily, "Why doesn't he have Mr. Rennie ask us?"

Mrs. Ambler looked up from her embroidery in surprise. "Why doesn't who have Mr. Rennie ask us what?"

"That Englishman—Mr. Orbison. Why doesn't he have Mr. Rennie ask us to his villa to dine, or for tea, sometime when he's going there himself. I should think he would, since he's so anxious to meet us."

"Claire! What gives you the idea the poor man wants to know us?"

"Poor man?" Claire said sharply. "Why do you call him that?"

"Good gracious! He's a hopeless invalid, isn't he? He's the most tragically shattered"