"Get
the folio ready--I shall not be long."
Beatrice, who had listened to the brief dialogue in feverish
suspense, now came to the rescue, asking Lionel to give them the
benefit of his clear, ringing tenor in a trio of Mendelssohn's.
"My 'clear, ringing tenor' is quite at your service," he said
with a smile. "Lily is very unkind to me tonight."
They went to the piano, where Lord Airlie awaited them; and
Lillian, looking at her small, jeweled watch--Lord Earle's
present--saw that it wanted three minutes to nine.
She at once quitted the room, unobserved, as she thought; but
Lionel saw her go.
No words can tell how distasteful and repugnant was the task she
had undertaken. She would have suffered anything almost to have
evaded it. She, who never had a secret; she, whose every word
and action were open as the day; she, who shrank from all deceit
and untruth as from a deadly plague, to be mixed up with a
wretched clandestine love affair like this! She, to steal out of
her father's house at night, to meet a stranger, and plead her
sister's cause with him! The thought horrified her; but the
beautiful face in its wild sorrow, the sad voice in its
passionate anguish, urged her on.
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