Then she came closer to him, and said archly, almost in his ear,

‘Have you forgiven me?’

‘Forgiven you?  For what?’

’For laying hands on Elvira, after all.  You must have thought me a rash and headstrong person when you heard of it.  Oh, I worked so hard at her, and all with the dread of you in my mind!’

This perfect friendly openness, this bright camaraderie of hers, were so hard to meet!

‘You have played Elvira,’ he said, ’as I never thought it would be played by anybody; and I was blind from first to last.  I hoped you had forgotten that piece of pedantry on my part.’

‘One does not forget the turning-points of one’s life,’ she answered with a sudden gravity.

Kendal had been keeping an iron grip upon himself during the past hours, but, as she said this, standing close beside him, it seemed to him impossible that his self-restraint should hold much longer.  Those wonderful eyes of hers were full upon him; there was emotion in them,—­evidently the Nuneham scene was in her mind, as it was in his,—­and a great friendliness, even gratitude, seemed to look out through them.  But it was as though his doom were written in the very candour and openness of her gaze, and he rushed desperately into speech again, hardly knowing what he was saying.

’It gives me half pain, half pleasure, that you should speak of it so.  I have never ceased to hate myself for that day.  But you have travelled far indeed since the White Lady—­I never knew any one do so much in so short a time!’

She smiled—­did her lip quiver?  Evidently his praise was very pleasant to her, and there must have been something strange and stirring to her feeling in the intensity and intimacy of his tone.  Her bright look caught his again, and he believed for one wild moment that the eyelids sank and fluttered.  He lost all consciousness of the crowd; his whole soul seemed concentrated on that one instant.  Surely she must feel it, or love is indeed impotent!

But no,—­it was all a delusion! she moved away from him, and the estranging present rushed in again between them.

‘It has been M. de Chateauvieux’s doing, almost all of it,’ she said eagerly, with a change of voice, ’and your sister’s.  Will you come and see me some time and talk about some of the Paris people?  Oh, I am wanted!  But first you must be introduced to Macias.  Wasn’t he good?  It was such an excellent choice of Mr. Wallace’s.  There he is,-and there is his wife, that pretty little dark woman.’

Kendal followed her mechanically, and presently found himself talking nothings to Mr. Harting, who, gorgeous in his Spanish dress, was receiving the congratulations which poured in upon him with a pleasant mixture of good manners and natural elation.  A little farther on he stumbled upon Forbes and the Stuarts, Mrs. Stuart as sparkling and fresh as ever, a suggestive contrast in her American crispness and prettiness to the high-bred distinction of Madame de Chateauvieux, who was standing near her.