He didn’t trust me.
“I will do my best,” I said, softly and bitterly. Let him suppose, if he chose, that I meant doing my best to let him look a fool before his uncle and his pompous fine business acquaintance, indeed. What would he amount to, I wondered, this acquaintance of the Governor’s for whom I, Monica Trant, was to be on my best behaviour? Probably someone Father wouldn’t have had in the house!
We reached the turning to the station and I stopped.
“Was there anything else that you wished to speak to me about?”
“No, thank you,” said my employer at his curtest. “That was all. Good-morning!”
He lifted his hat; his face beneath it was set with temper. Good! Let him vent it on Mr. Dundonald at the office!
“Good-morning,” I said, and turned away. I was glad that there had been no one in the lane to see that parting; to anyone who had watched, knowing who that tall, blonde, savage-looking man was who had said good-morning so frigidly to that small girl with her head held in a very straight line with her back, it would have looked so ludicrously like the last thing in the world that it really was—a lover’s quarrel!
How furiously he had marched off! I turned round, after walking on a few yards, to catch another glimpse of that stampede.
Then I was sorry.
For at that very moment he had elected to turn round and see me!