Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/62

48 amusement of it. "I hope that's not the way you mean to look at Mr. Vidal!"

"Ah, Mr. Vidal!" she ambiguously murmured.

"Shan't you then be glad to see him?"

"Intensely glad. But how shall I say it?" She thought a moment and then went on as if she found the answer to her question in Tony's exceptional intelligence and their comfortable intimacy. "There's gladness and gladness. It isn't love's young dream; it's rather an old and rather a sad story. We've worried and waited—we've been acquainted with grief. We've come together a weary way."

"I know you've had a horrid grind. But isn't this the end of it?"

Rose hesitated. "That's just what he's to settle."

"Happily, I see! Just look at him."

The glass doors, as Tony spoke, had been thrown open by the butler. The young man from China was there—a short, meagre young man, with a smooth face and a dark blue double-breasted jacket. "Mr. Vidal!" the butler announced, withdrawing again, while the visitor,