"Come in," calls Florence slowly.
It is three hours since she went for her unhappy walk to the lime-grove, and now she is composed again, and is waiting for the gong to sound before descending to the drawing-room, where she almost dreads the thought that she will be face to face with Sir Adrian. She is dressed for dinner, has indeed taken most particular pains with her toilet, if only to hide the ravages that these past three hours of bitter weeping have traced upon her beautiful face. She looks sad still, but calm and dignified.
Dora is dressed too, but is looking flurried and flushed.
"I beg your pardon," she says; "but my letter--the letter I showed you to-day--have you it?"
"No," replies Florence simply; "I thought I gave it back to you; but, if not, it must be here on this table"--lifting a book or two from the small gypsy-table near which she had been sitting when Dora came to her room early in the day.
Dora looks for it everywhere, in a somewhat nervous, frightened manner, Florence helping her the while; but nothing comes of their search, and they are fain to go down-stairs without it, as the gong sounding loudly tells them they are already late.
"Never mind," says Dora, afraid of having betrayed too much concern. "It is really of no consequence. I only wanted it, because--well, because"--with the simper that drives Florence nearly mad--"he wrote it."
"I shall tell my maid to look for it, and, if she finds it, you shall have it this evening," responds Florence, with a slight contraction of her brows that passes unnoticed.
To Florence's mortification, Arthur Dynecourt takes her in to dinner. On their way across the hall from the drawing-room to the dining-room, he presses the hand that rests so reluctantly upon his arm, and says, with an affectation of the sincerest concern-"You are not well; you are looking pale and troubled, and--pardon me if I am wrong, but I think you have been crying."
"I must beg, sir," she retorts, with excessive hauteur, removing her hand from his arm, as though his pressure had burned her--"I must beg, you will not trouble yourself to study my countenance. Your doing so is most offensive to me."
"To see you in trouble, and not long to help or comfort you is impossible to me," goes on Dynecourt, unmoved by her scorn. "Are you still dwelling on the past--on what is irrevocable? Have you had fresh cause to remember it to-day?"