BEAUTIFUL JULIA—AND MY LORD
"I only caught a glimpse of you. I remember your friend, though."
"She remembered you, too."
"I don't know her name, though."
"Julia Robins."
"Ah, yes—is it? He's about polished off that bone, hasn't he? Is she—er—a great friend of yours?"
His manner was perhaps a little at fault; the slightest note of chaff had crept into it; and the slightest was enough to put Sophy's quills up.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Why not? Every reason why she should be," he answered with his lips. His eyes answered more, but he refrained his tongue. He was scrupulously a gentleman—more so perhaps than, had sexes and places been reversed, Sophy herself would have been. But his eyes told her. "Only," he went on, "if so, why did you hide?"
That bit of chaff did not anger Sophy. But it went home to a different purpose—far deeper, far truer home than the young man had meant. Not the mark only reddened—even the cheeks flushed. She said no word. With a fling —out of her arms—a gesture strangely, prophetically foreign as it seemed to him in after-days—she exhibited herself—the print frock, the soiled apron, the bare arms, red hands, the ugly knot of her hair, the scrap of cap she wore. For a moment her lips quivered, while the mark the Red Star of future days and future fame—grew redder still.
The only sound was of Lorenzo's worrying the last tough scrap of bone. The lad, gentleman as he was, was good flesh and blood, too—and the blood was moving. He felt a little tightness in his throat; he was new to it. New, too, was Sophy Grouch to what
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