"Hilda!" he exclaimed.
Hilda stood before him in silence, with drooping head, pale with surprise and embarrassment.
"Somebody told you I was here," she faltered at last.
"Nobody told me," he answered, smiling at her confusion. "I have not even been looking for you, or making inquiries as to your whereabouts. Your letter was so very self-assertive, you seemed so completely mistress of the situation, that I felt it would be folly to interfere with you. As I opposed you when you wanted to marry Bothwell Grahame, it would be very inconsistent of me to oppose your renunciation of him."
Hilda gave a faint sigh. This speech of her brother's was reassuring, but it implied discredit to Bothwell. She would fain have stood up for her true knight, would fain have praised him whom she had forsaken; but she felt it was safer to hold her peace. By and by, when her sacrifice was completed, and when Bothwell Grahame was Lady Valeria's husband, she could afford to defend his character.
"No, my dear child, our meeting is quite accidental. I came here to see Monsieur Tillet's drawings."
"Our young friend is known to you, Monsieur?" inquired Eugène Tillet, who had looked on with some appearance of interest at a conversation of which he did not understand a word.
This Mr. Heathcote was evidently Hilda's brother, of whom Mdlle. Duprez had spoken before she introduced her protégée to the family circle.
"Your young friend is my sister, Monsieur," answered Heathcote; "and since she was determined to run away from home, I am glad she fell into such good hands."
"And now you have found her you are going to carry her off, I suppose," said Tillet. "It will be a pity, for I hear that her talents have made a strong impression upon one of the cleverest professors at the Conservatoire, and that she may do great things with her voice if she pursue her studies there. My young people will be in despair at losing her."
"They shall not lose her quite immediately," replied Heathcote, "though if she is bent upon studying at the Conservatoire, I think it would be better for her to have her old governess to look after her in Paris."
"Fräulein Meyerstein!" exclaimed Hilda. "She would worry me out of my life. She would talk about—about—the past." She could not bring herself to mention Bothwell's name just yet. "My only chance of ever being happy again is to forget my old life. There is some possibility of that here, among new faces and new surroundings. And they are all so kind to me here—Madame Tillet is like a mother."
All this was said hurriedly in English, while Monsieur Tillet discreetly occupied himself putting away his sketch-books.
