"How do you do, Mr. Campion? I have not met you for a long time, I think. How good of you to come to-day! Lady Pynsent is so pleased."
There was nothing for Sydney to do but to respond in the same gracious strain; but he was certainly more reserved than usual in his speech, and behaved with an almost exaggerated amount of respect and formality. After the first two or three sentences he noticed that her eyes began to look abstractedly away from him, and that she answered one of his remarks at random. And while he was wondering, with some irritation, what this change might mean, she drew back into a bow window, and motioned to him almost imperceptibly to follow her. A heavy window curtain half hid them from curious eyes, and a bank of flowers in the window gave them an ostensible pretext for their withdrawal.
"Look at John's gloxinias," said Nan. "They came from Culverley, you know. Oh, Mr. Campion, I want to tell you—I'm sorry that I was so rude to you at Culverley last summer."
This proceeding was so undignified and so unexpected that Sydney was stricken dumb with amaze.
"Perhaps you have forgotten it," said Nan, coloring hotly; "but I have not. It all came from you not knowing who I was, I suppose—Mrs. Murray told me that she believes you thought I was the governess; and if I had been, how odd it must have seemed to you that I should talk about your duties to the Vanebury laborers! You know I have some property there, and so——"
"Oh, it was perfectly natural, and I never thought of it again," said Sydney lamely. But she went on unheeding—
"And then I felt vexed, and when you asked me for a flower"—how innocently it was said!—"I know I banged the door in your face. Selina said I must have been very rude to you. And so I was."
But Selina had not meant that she should acknowledge her "rudeness" to Mr. Campion, nor had Nan told her of the bold admiration that she had read in Sydney's eyes.
"Will you forgive me, Mr. Campion? You are such a friend of John's that I should not like to think I had offended you."
"You never offended me, Miss Pynsent. In fact, I'm afraid—I—was very dense." He really did not know what to say; Miss Pynsent's naïveté almost alarmed him.