Felicia looked up from her book to meet this speech. Her face, over amazement, still kept the look of steely steadiness. “I am sorry that any one should think my father crude or egotistic; but a stranger’s opinion of him could hardly give me pain.”
This, Angela felt, was not pleasant. It was not what she had expected. She regretted her little speech at the table which, to quick intelligence, might savour of meanness—a stroke under cover of darkness; and Felicia must not suspect her of stooping to any contest; indeed, Angela did not suspect herself. And now Felicia seemed to drag her down into open warfare. It was not at all pleasant.
“You count me a stranger, Miss Merrick?” There was a real quiver in her voice.
“Do you count me as more?” Felicia asked.
“I want to count you as a great deal more.”
A rebuff, especially an open rebuff, was intolerable to Angela. She smiled now in her determination to win allegiance, even if an unwilling one, and, as she leaned across the desk, smiling, Geoffrey and Maurice came in. The moment could not have been more propitious; her loveliness of attitude and look must, she felt, contrast most advantageously with Felicia’s sullen stiffness. She let it tell for a moment and then slipped over to Felicia’s sofa, taking her hand and turning the smile, now, on the two men.
“I am telling Miss Merrick how splendid she was,” she said; “we all understood, didn’t we?”
Felicia, in dismayed astonishment, felt a net thrown round her. She broke through it, regardless of rents. “I don’t understand,” she declared. She rose, drawing her hand from Angela’s, confronting them. “I think trivial things had best be left alone.” With this, picking up her hat, she went to a mirror and deliberately tied it on, feeling a full composure over her hurry of angry thoughts. She did not care how uncouth she seemed. Angela should not force her to seeming trust when she felt only deepest distrust. Her eyes, in the mirror, met Maurice’s. Before she was conscious of the impulse she found that she had commanded him as a woman commands the man of whose obedience she is assured. At once he understood and answered.
“May I come too?” he asked.
“Do. I am going for a walk.”