Convention, grim and untractable, tried to pull the string to make all puppets dance. But for once Louisa Harris rebelled. She closed her ears to insinuating calls from her friends, responding with a mere curt nod to the most gushing "Oh, Miss Harris! how are you?" which greeted her from every side.
She turned her back resolutely on convention. The slave for once rebelled against the taskmaster: the puppet refused to dance to the ever-wearying monotonous tune.
She had lost sight of Luke the moment the court rose. She supposed that his solicitor, Mr. Dobson, knowing the ropes, had got him away from the reach of cackling geese by leading him through some other more private way. But she was far too dazed, too numb, either to wonder or to be disappointed at this. She felt as if she had pitched head foremost down a long flight of stairs, and had only just had sufficient strength to pick herself up, and not to let other people see quite how severely she had been bruised.
Mentally, morally, even physically, she felt bruised from head to foot.
Colonel Harris contrived to steer her through the crowd: at the gate outside even the smoke-laden atmosphere seemed pure and invigorating in comparison with that stuffy pen, wherein the herd of cackling geese had found its happy hunting ground. Louisa drew in a long breath, filling her lungs with fog, but feeling a little freer, less choked in spite of the grime which she inhaled.
"I think," said Colonel Harris now, "that you'd better go straight back to the Langham, and get some tea. You'll feel better when you've had your tea."
"I feel all right, dear," she said, trying to smile.
"So much the better," he retorted with an equal effort at cheerfulness. "I'll come along as soon as I can."
"Where are you off to, dear?" she asked.
"I'll just go and have a talk to Tom," he replied.