She made no answer; perhaps she was a little intimidated; but she looked at him with eyes and lips full of latent vivacity.
'That was why I left,' he finished firmly. There was in his tone a hint of that engaging and piquant antagonism which springs up between lovers and dies away; he had the air of telling her that since she had invited a confession she was welcome to it.
She retreated, still admiring, and said evenly that the ball had been a great success.
Soon afterwards Ethel and Milly unexpectedly entered the room. They had put on the formal aspect of dejection which they deemed proper for them, but on perceiving that their elders were talking quite naturally, they at once abandoned constraint and became natural too. From the sight of their unaffected pleasure in seeing Arthur Twemlow again, Leonora drew further sustenance for her mood of serene content.
'Just fancy, Mr. Twemlow,' Millicent burst out. 'We walked all the way to Oldcastle, and we never thought, and no one reminded us. It's father's fault, really.'
'What is father's fault, really?'
'It's Thursday afternoon and the shops were all shut. We shall have to go to-morrow morning.'
'Ah!' he said. 'The stores don't shut on Thursday afternoon in New York.'
'Mother will be able to come with us to-morrow morning,' said Ethel, and approaching Leonora she asked: 'Are you all right, mother?'
This simple, familiar conversation, and the free movements of the girls, and the graver suavity of Arthur and herself, seemed to Leonora to constitute a picture, a scene, of mysterious and profound charm.