And with a movement of quick grace, most artless, most unconventional, one of the finest roses in the basket was transferred by the pupil’s hand to her future master’s button-hole.
‘Grazias, muy Grazias,’ said Geff, hazarding the only two words of Spanish he knew.
Marjorie clasped her hands over her ears.
‘You pronounce frightfully ill, though the words are true, Mr. Arbuthnot. Decent people say the “z” in grazias sharp. They say “mou-y.” Yes, sir,—and although you do teach me classics and mathematics—Spanish and French are my natural languages, and I shall always think myself free to give you a little lesson in pronunciation.’
‘Classics and mathematics!’ stammered Geoffrey Arbuthnot, reddening as the unwelcome image of Miss Bartrand was brought back to him. ‘I believed—I mean, my impression was——’
He stopped short.
‘English University manners are not good,’ thought Marjorie, shaking her head, pityingly. ‘But I like my poor B.A.—yes, just because he is shy and rugged, and has that ugly scar across his forehead. I respect him for his unpolished manner. I will call on his wife to-morrow! My impression was,’ she remarked aloud, showing such a gleam of ivory teeth in her smile, as rendered a large and rather square mouth lovely—‘my impression was that I advertised in the Chronique Guernésiaise for some one good enough to help me in my attempts at work, and that Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot offered to be that some one. I hope, sir, you do not repent you of the offer already?’
So he stood in presence of the heiress; a little country girl with sun-kissed hands, innocent of inkstains, a child’s fledgling figure, a child’s delightful boldness, and not one barleycorn’s weight of dignity in her composition. Should he, obeying first impulse, believe in her, and so incur the fate of well-snubbed predecessors? Or should he arm himself against the coquetry which this very frankness, this assumption of simplicity in dress and speech, might mask?
Long ago, in Gaston’s Cambridge rooms, Geff came across a French volume entitled, ‘The Bad Things which Men have said of Woman.’ He extracted therefrom, at more than one reading, such bitter nectar as his scanty knowledge of the tongue allowed. Several of the maxims had slumbered in his memory. They reawakened at this moment, and bade him play the philosopher, remember at what price per hour the heiress was about to hire him, and for what work. ‘Self-respect was in his keeping still,’ cried half a dozen wicked old well-chosen French cynics in a breath. ‘Let him retain it.’
And Geff followed his own impulse. He looked on Marjorie’s unblemished prettiness, and believed in her—with a circumspect belief.