Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/477

Rh too. I am very sorry, George" and, forgetting the people all about us, I put my pale yellow hand into his straw coloured one, and give it a friendly squeeze; he holds mine for a moment, then I draw it away, and looking up see Paul Vasher standing before us.

I hope you are not feeling dull, Miss Adair?" he says; and, cold as are our ways and looks to each other always now, his voice strikes upon me like an unexpected douche of ice-cold water.

"Not at all, thank you, Mr. Vasher."

He moves away among his guests, and George and I look after him silently; between us Paul's name is never spoken. Dolly goes by with her tall cavalier, giving me a saucy, side-long look of triumph. She just reaches his elbow. Smiles follow them as they pass, but they are so taken up with each other that they do not see them. As the assemblage ebbs to and fro, scraps of conversation come to our ears. "Pity Adair quarrels so confoundedly with everybody," issues from a knot of men discussing the people present (apparently), "for he has the prettiest family of daughters I ever saw." And a minute later I hear a woman's voice exclaim, "That Helen Adair? Impossible! How she has gone off, poor thing!" George's eyes meet mine, and I smile.

"Hags!" cries George, in a fury. "I should like to knock all their spiteful, ugly heads together!"

"Am I so very much altered, George?" I ask, with a sharp pang. "I never was very pretty, you know; and if people say that, I must have grown absolutely ugly."

"You are altered," he says, scanning my face with his honest tender eyes; "but you have lost none of your good looks; to me you are always sweet and lovely, Nell. You are very pale now, and you do not smile a bit as you used to do, but I don't think you need be afraid of growing ugly, Nell."