Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/311

 quite safe in your care; safer, indeed, than in mine," and again thanking him, she departed.

Lord Stranleigh sat there very quietly, deep in reverie, and it was not of the gold mine he was thinking. His house seemed, somehow, to become empty, lonesome, deserted. He wished she had stayed longer, and now chided himself for lack of presence of mind. He should have raised objections, or asked further explanations. He might have brought down a map, inducing her to point out the exact location of her estate: a hundred methods now suggested themselves to him by which a departure could have been postponed.

How exquisitely charming she was! Although dealing with dry finance and company-forming, these details, usually so disliked by him, had taken on a certain romantic atmosphere caused by the sweet music of her voice. Then he remembered she had not left him any address, and next moment surmised, quite correctly, that she could be communicated with through the Austrian Embassy. Stranleigh admitted to himself that at last his fancy had become entangled with a woman. His thoughts turned towards friends who had married foreigners, and in every case he could remember, these international unions had been most successful.