She leaned so close to him while she waited in vain for his reply, that the ermine about her neck brushed his cheek.

The perfume of her clothes and hair, the pleading of her deep violet-blue eyes, all helped to keep him tongue-tied.

Nothing of this sort had ever happened to him before.

He did not in the least understand what it could possibly mean.
"I am speaking to you now, Mr.Tavernake," she continued earnestly, "for your own good.

When you tell the young lady, as you have promised to this evening, that you have seen me, and that I am very, very anxious to find out where she is, she will very likely go down on her knees and beg you to give me no information whatever about her.