Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/95

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ZULEIKA DOBSON
83

"Without a word," said the other.

"Without a glance?" asked the Duke. It was testified by the one and the other that there had been not so much as a glance.

"Doubtless," the disingenuous Duke said, "she had a headache . . . Was she pale?"

"Very pale," answered the one.

"A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who was a constant reader of novels.

"Did she look," the Duke inquired, "as if she had spent a sleepless night?"

That was the impression made on both.

"Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?"

No, they would not go so far as to say that.

"Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural brilliance?

"Quite unnatural," confessed the one.

"Twin stars," interpolated the other.

"Did she, in fact, seem to be consumed by some inward rapture?"

Yes, now they came to think of it, this was exactly how she had seemed.

It was sweet, it was bitter, for the Duke. "I remember," Zuleika had said to him, "nothing that happened to me this morning till I found myself at your door." It was bitter-sweet to have that outline filled in by these artless pencils. No, it was only bitter, to be, at his time of life, living in the past.

"The purpose of your tattle?" he asked coldly.