She surveyed him a minute in astonishment. "You're perfectly extraordinary," she said at last, in a tone of exasperation, "and"—she threw at him a second later—"and impossible!"
Before he could reply she went grandly up the stairway, so that he was obliged to follow her. In the hall above she turned on him again. Had he not known that he had given her no cause for offence he would have said that her eyes filled with tears.
"Things are very hard as it is," she said, reproachfully. "You needn't go out of your way to make them gratuitously cruel."
"But, Miss Guion—" he began to protest.
"Please go in," she commanded, throwing open, as she spoke, the door of her father's room.
XV
eanwhile, down on the lawn, Drusilla and Ashley were talking things over from their own points of view. There had been a second of embarrassment when they were first left alone, which Drusilla got over by pointing with her parasol to an indistinguishable spot in the stretch of tree-tops, spires, and gables sloping from the gate, saying:
"That's our house—the one with the little white cupola."