"Look," said Jane, extending decorously gloved fingers, "tell Miss Mayne you hate people with gloves. She made us wear them—Georgie and me."
"Did she?" said the host, and advanced to welcome the autocrat who had decreed gloves. Of course, Emily would expect children to wear gloves——
He was face to face with Miss Mayne, with Georgina at her side. The governess had overheard Jane's protest, and was laughing as they shook hands. Graeme approved of her laugh; it produced tiny wrinkles at the side of her nose, giving her face an ingenuous and infectious merriment. Despite the pre-occupation of the apology he was mentally framing, Graeme noticed that her eyes were grey, and that there were freckles powdered like gold-dust about the attractive nose.
"I ought to have let you know before," he said. "I hope you don't mind, but the fact is, my step-sister is away. She and her husband have had to go up to town."
The smile faded from Miss Mayne's face. "I'm sorry. We didn't know."
Her regard, meeting the man's, somehow reminded him of the searching look Cornelius James had given him at their first encounter.
"Emily entrusted me with the job of explaining her absence and apologising. I should have done both sooner, but, somehow, it never entered my head. I have been looking forward so much to having a party——" He grinned boyishly and flushed.
Miss Mayne Was sophisticated enough to interpret aright all that quick flush meant. Her smile returned like a reassured rabbit sallying forth again from its burrow.
"It's very brave of you," she said, "and we are ever so grateful, because we've been looking forward to this afternoon, too, haven't we, Georgina?"
Georgina awkwardly confirmed this; she was at the shy age of girlhood—the age at which youth finds itself a trifle superfluous in Nature's inexorable scheme.