"I am glad to find you alone--" he began.
"Yes? I am generally alone," answered Sylvie with a little smile--
"except for Katrine--she would be here to welcome you this evening,
but she has a very bad neuralgic headache--"
"I am very sorry," murmured Aubrey, with hypocritical earnestness,
all the while devoutly blessing Madame Bozier's timely
indisposition. "She is a great sufferer from neuralgia, I believe?"
"Yes . . ." and Sylvie, to divert the cloud of embarrassment that
seemed to be deepening rather than dispersing for them both, rang
the bell with a pretty imperativeness that was rather startling to
Aubrey's nerves.
"What is that for?" he enquired irrelevantly.
"Only for coffee!"
Their eyes met,--the mutual glance was irresistible, and they both
laughed. Sylvia's Arab page entered in response to her summons, a
pretty dusky-skinned lad of some twelve years old, picturesquely
arrayed in scarlet, and bearing a quaintly embossed gilt salver with
coffee prepared in the Arabian fashion.
"Do you like coffee made in this way?" asked Sylvie, as she handed
Aubrey his cup.
Aubrey's eyes were fixed on the small white hand that looked so
dainty, curled over the trifle of Sevres china that was called a
coffee-cup,--and he answered vaguely,
"This way? Oh, yes--of course--any way!"
A faint smile lifted the rosy corners of Sylvie's mouth as she heard
this incoherent reply--and the Arab page rolled his dark eyes up at
his fair mistress with a look of dog-like affectionate enquiry, as
to whether perhaps some fault in his serving had caused that little
playful enigmatical expression on the face which he, in common with
many others of his sex, thought the fairest in the world.
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