Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/91

78 persuasive monologue. She said but little; she listened. He abstained from overt love-making; instinct told him that she was not in the mood to imbibe the poison. But he must exert himself to entertain her; and he did. They could not see each other's faces; the burning end of his cigar, as he moved it to and fro, in the intervals of speech, was the only light that played upon the silhouette of his head, lying back in the wicker chair.

How often, afterwards, the picture, the very tones of the man whom she saw that night, "as in a glass, darkly," returned to her! She remembered the spell of his voice, struggling to reassert its ascendency over her half-awakened consciousness; she heard the sentimental, sensual swing of that Viennese waltz, delicately touched, in the distance. And then at last the piano was shut, and Mrs. Shaw rang the bell, after which she came out into the verandah.

"I think it is time, Bessie, that we went to bed. We will leave the colonel to his cigars and his B. and S. I wish I could sit up half the night, but I can't. I am quite prostrate with the heat—ain't you?"

Elizabeth remembered also, afterwards, how her aunt had kissed her, when they bade each other good night in the corridor which divided their rooms; and how, when she returned the salutation, she had said—

"I must have a long talk with you, aunty, to-morrow."

And then they parted.

Elizabeth's room felt stifling as she entered it, although the window leading on to the balcony stood wide open. The faint odour of a cigar rose from the verandah below. She never kept her little maid up; she was independent