The words were obviously equivalent to a sigh of regret.
"But not for good, I hope," said Miss Brooke; and Paul's universe changed at once into a wonderful enchanted garden. "Of course, it will be very nice to be at home with poppa and mamma again, but I should not be leaving Paris from choice. I was making such progress at school that my professor was quite angry I couldn't stay. But perhaps I shall be back in a year's time. I certainly shall if everything goes well."
"I do hope it's nothing serious that calls you away, and that keeps you from your studies so long a time," exclaimed Paul fervently.
"From my point of view it's certainly serious," smiled Miss Brooke, good-humouredly. "As I've already tried to make you believe, I am a very greedy person, with a fondness for dollars, and the whole trouble is that they keep out of reach. Poor hardworked poppa can't send me any more money just now, but he'll be getting a bigger salary next year, and I shall be able to go back and paint a masterpiece for the Salon. In the meanwhile I shall have to amuse myself as best I can sketching about the place, and watching poppa getting through big batches of couples. He's a minister--you know the cloth's hereditary in our family--and marries off people wholesale."
Till that moment Miss Brooke had been the railway king's daughter. For Paul to find now that she was a comparatively poor girl, whose anxiety to earn money by making her mark in art was no mere jesting pretence, involved a complete readjustment of his mental focus. But its instantaneity made the operation a violent one, especially as he strove hard not to exhibit any external signs of discomposure. At the same time a good deal that had bewildered him was explained, though there were points yet on which he needed enlightenment. And with all his astonishment went an unbounded admiration for the cheerful way in which she accepted her position, the lover's keen lookout for every scrap of virtue in the beloved seizing on this greedily for commendation. What a splendid, plucky girl she was! The glamour of his romance was heightened. Mere millionaires and all that appertained to them seemed suddenly prosaic.
Into what a bizarre misconception had he fallen! She herself was not to blame. If his mind had not been clogged up by what Thorn had told him beforehand he would not so persistently have misunderstood her references to money; but how should he have thought of challenging what he knew only now to have been a mere speculative rumour? There had been nothing in her appearance and personality to belie that rumour, and, as obviously she was not called upon to contradict statements about herself she had never heard, such manifestations of the truth as had since become visible to him had only served to mystify him.
