“No, I suppose not,” he said, a little ruefully.  “But, anyhow, fate has brought us together again.  I recognized you the moment I set eyes on you, for all your grand clothes and your swell bouquets.  I tell you I was just struck all of a heap; of course, I knew about your luck, but I hadn’t realized it.  There wasn’t any one in the whole theatre who looked the lady more—­’pon honor; you’d have no cause to blush in the company of duchesses.  In fact I know a duchess or two who don’t look near so refined.  I was quite surprised.  Do you know, if any one had told me you used to live up in a garret—­”

“Oh, please don’t recall unpleasant things,” interrupted Esther, petulantly, a little shudder going through her, partly at the picture he called up, partly at his grating vulgarity.  Her repulsion to him was growing.  Why had he developed so disagreeably?  She had not disliked him as a boy, and he certainly had not inherited his traits of coarseness from his father, whom she still conceived as a courtly old gentleman.

“Oh well, if you don’t like it, I won’t.  I see you’re like me; I never think of the Ghetto if I can help it.  Well, as I was saying, I haven’t had a wink of sleep since I saw you.  I lay tossing about, thinking all sorts of things, till I could stand it no longer, and I got up and dressed and walked about the streets and strayed into Covent Garden Market, where the inspiration came upon me to get you this bouquet.  For, of course, it was about you that I had been thinking.”

“About me?” said Esther, turning pale.

“Yes, of course.  Don’t make Schnecks—­you know what I mean.  I can’t help using the old expression when I look at you; the past seems all come back again.  They were happy days, weren’t they, Esther, when I used to come up to see you in Royal Street; I think you were a little sweet on me in those days, Esther, and I know I was regular mashed on you.”

He looked at her with a fond smile.

“I dare say you were a silly boy,” said Esther, coloring uneasily under his gaze.  “However, you needn’t reproach yourself now.”

“Reproach myself, indeed!  Never fear that.  What I have been reproaching myself with all night is never having looked you up.  Somehow, do you know, I kept asking myself whether I hadn’t made a fool of myself lately, and I kept thinking things might have been different if—­”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” interrupted Esther with an embarrassed laugh.  “You’ve been doing very well, learning to know the world and studying law and mixing with pleasant people.”

“Ah, Esther,” he said, shaking his head, “it’s very good of you to say that.  I don’t say I’ve done anything particularly foolish or out of the way.  But when a man is alone, he sometimes gets a little reckless and wastes his time, and you know what it is.  I’ve been thinking if I had some one to keep me steady, some one I could respect, it would be the best thing that could happen to me.”