"
But Meredith did not move. He was smiling at her in evident
admiration. She looked very pretty with that determined little pout
of the lips, and perhaps she knew it. Moreover, he did not seem to
attach so much importance to the thought as to the result--to the
mind as to the lips.
"Ah!" he said, "you do not know the old gentleman. That is not our
way of doing things. We are not expansive."
His face was grave again, and she noticed it with a sudden throb of
misgiving. She did not want to begin taking life seriously so soon.
It was like going back to school in the middle of the holidays.
"But it will be all right in a day or two, will it not? It is not
serious," she said.
"I am afraid it is serious, Millicent."
He took her hand with a gravity which made matters worse.
"What a pity!" she exclaimed; and somehow both the words and the
speaker rang shallow. She did not seem to grasp the situation,
which was perhaps beyond her reach. But she did the next best
thing. She looked puzzled, pretty, and helpless.
"What is to be done, Jack?" she said, laying her two hands on his
breast and looking up pleadingly.
There was something in the man's clear-cut face--something beyond
aristocratic repose--as he looked down into her eyes--something
which Sir John Meredith might perhaps have liked to see there.
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