“You desire to see Mr. Bainrothe, I suppose,” she remarked, after a long silence, during which she had again betaken herself to her occupation, without lifting her eyes as she asked the question.

“I desire to look my fate in the face at once, and understand his conditions,” I replied, sullenly.

“But what if he is not here—­what if Dr. Englehart—­” lifting her eyes to mine.

“I cannot be mistaken,” I interrupted, with impetuosity.  “I have heard his step; he eats in the room below; I am convinced, for I know of old that bronchial cough of his—­the effect of gormandism—­”

Then suddenly, Ernie, looking up, made a revelation, irrelevant, yet to my ear terrible and astounding, but fortunately incomprehensible to my companion.  What did that little vigilant creature ever fail to remark?

“Mirry make tea,” he said, or seemed to say, and my face paled and flushed alternately, until my brain swam.

“Make tea?” said the voice of Mrs. Clayton, apparently at a great distance.  “No, I will make the tea, Ernie, as long as we stay together.  Mirry does not know how to draw tea like an Englishwoman.”

Oh, fortunate misunderstanding! how great was the reaction it occasioned!  From an almost fainting condition I rallied to vivacity, and, for long, weary hours, sat pointing out pictures to the boy, to win him to oblivion, and persuade him to silence.  Singularly enough, but not unusual with him, he never resumed the topic.  I had taken pains to hide my work from his observing eyes; and how he knew it, unless he lay silently and watched me from his little bed, when I worked at early dawn in mine, I never could conjecture.  A few days later Mrs. Clayton announced to me that Mr. Bainrothe would call very shortly.

It was early morning, I remember, when she laid before me the card of “Basil Bainrothe,” with its elaborate German characters, on which was written, in pencil, the addendum, “Will call at ten o’clock;” and, punctual as the hand to the hour, he knocked at the dressing-room door at the appointed time, and was admitted.

He entered with that light, jaunty step peculiar to him, and which I have consequently ever associated in others with impudence and guile.  Hat and cane in the left hand, he entered; two fingers of the right raised to his lips, by way of salutation (he clinched his glove in the remainder), to be offered to me later, and ignored completely, then waved carelessly, as if condoning the offense.

He was quite a picture as he came in—­a fashion-plate, and as such I coolly regarded him—­fresh, fair, and smiling, looking younger, if possible, than when we parted a year before, and handsome, as that much-abused word goes, in his debonair, off-hand style of appearance.

He was dressed with even more than his usual care and trimness (wore patent-leather boots, my aversion from that hour, for these were the first I had ever seen), and lavender-colored pantaloons, very tightly strapped down over them; a glossy black coat and vest, and linen of unimpeachable quality and whiteness; while a chain of fine Venetian gold held his watch, or eye-glass, or both, in suspension from his neck.  Yet no beggar in rags ever appeared to me half so loathly as did this speckless dandy!