When Love Calls

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Weyman Stanley John. When Love Calls

I. HER STORY

II. HIS STORY

A Strange Invitation

The Invisible Portraits

Along the Garonne

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I was not dining out much at that time, partly because my acquaintance in town was limited, and something too because I cared little for it. But these were pleasant people, the old gentleman witty and amusing, the children, lively girls, nice to look at and good to talk with. The party had too a holiday flavor about them wholesome to recall in Scotland Yard: and as I had thought, play-time over, I should see no more of them, I was proportionately pleased to find that Mr. Guest had not forgotten me, and pleased also-shrewdly expecting that we might kill our fish over again-to regard his invitation to dinner at a quarter-to-eight as a royal command.

But if I took it so, I was sadly wanting in the regal courtesy to match. What with one delay owing to work that would admit of none, and another caused by a cabman strange to the ways of town, it was twenty-five minutes after the hour named, when I reached Bolton Gardens. A stately man, so like the Queen's Counsel, that it was plain upon whom the latter modelled himself, ushered me straight into the dining-room, where Guest greeted me very kindly, and met my excuses by apologies on his part-for preferring, I suppose, the comfort of eleven people to mine. Then he took me down the table, and said, "My daughter," and Miss Guest shook hands with me and pointed to the chair at her left. I had still, as I unfolded my napkin, to say "Clear, if you please," and then I was free to turn and apologize to her, being a little shy, and, as I have said, a somewhat infrequent diner out.

.....

"So that is your opinion?" she said, after a pause. "Do you know," with a laughing glance, "that some people think I am like her."

"Thank you, Mr. Herapath," she replied, with coldness, though she had blushed darkly to her ears. "That, I think, must be enough of compliments, for to-night-as you are not an old friend." And she turned away, leaving me to curse my folly in saying so much, when our acquaintance was as yet in the bud, and as susceptible to over-warmth as to a temperature below zero.

.....