Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/44

professional capacity daring the day. He purposely worded his note in such a form as not to require an answer from her which would be possibly awkward to write.

No answer came. Natnrally he should not have been surprised at this; and yet he felt a little checked, even though she had only refrained from volunteering a reply that was not demanded.

At eight, the hour fixed by himself, he crossed over and was passively admitted by the servant. Mrs.Frankland, as she called herself, received him in the large music and dancing room on the first floor front, and not in any private little parlor as he had expected. This cast a distressingly business-like color over their first meeting after so many yeare of severance. The woman he had wronged stood before him, well-dressed, even to his metropolitan eyes, and her manner as she came up to him was dignified eyen to hardness. She certainly was not glad to see him. But what could he expect after a neglect of twenty years !

“How do you do, Mr. Millborne ?” she said, cheerfully, as to any chance caller. “I am obliged to receive you here because my daughter has a friend downstairs.”

“Your daughter—and mine.”

"Ah—yas, yea,” she replied, hastily, as if the addition had escaped her memory. ‘ Bat perhaps the less said about that the better, in fairness to me, You will consider me a widow, please.”

“Certainly, Leonora—” He could not get on, her manner was go cold and indifferent. The expected scene of sad reproach, subdued to delicacy by the run of years, was absent altogether. He waa obliged to come to the point without preamble.

“You are quite free, Leonora—I mean aa to marriage? There is nobody who has your promise, or—”