"You have been very kind to us, Mr. Campion. I don't know how to thank you."
It was on the tip of Sydney's tongue to use some badinage such as he would have done, in his light and easy fashion, to a servant-maid or shop-girl. But something in her look caused him, luckily, to refrain. He went as near as he dared to the confines of love-making.
"Give me the flower you wear," he said, leaning a little towards her. "Then I shall at least have a remembrance of you."
His tone and his look were warmer than he knew. She shrank back, visibly surprised, and rather offended. Before he could add a word she had quietly taken the rosebud from her dress, handed it to him, and disappeared into the house, closing the door behind her in a somewhat uncompromising way. Sydney was left alone on the gravelled path, with a half-withered rosebud in his hand, and a consciousness of having made himself ridiculous.
"She seems to be rather a little vixen," he said to himself, as he strolled up to his rooms to make some change in his clothes, which were damper than he liked. "What business has a pretty little governess to take that tone? Deuced out of place, I call it. I wonder if she'll be down to breakfast. She has very fetching eyes."
But she was not down to breakfast, and nothing was said about her, so Sydney concluded that her meals were taken in the schoolroom with the children.
"Such a pity—poor dear Nan has a headache," he heard Lady Pynsent saying by and by. "I hoped that she would come down and give us some music this evening, but she says she won't be able for it."
Sydney consoled himself with pretty Mrs. Murray.
"The fair violinist is out of tune, it seems," he said, in the course of an afternoon stroll with the new charmer.
"Who? Oh, Nan Pynsent."