It was exactly the tone in which I’d so often said, “Your tea, Mr. Dundonald!” and yet I knew that the man before me would guess that this deference was, under the circumstances, only a subtle form of defiance.
I handed him the cup. Then I stood there, outwardly as mild as milk, before him. One swift glance into the mirror over the mantelpiece beyond his broad shoulder—his shoulders are the best thing about him—had shown me an attractive picture enough—a big, blonde man faced by a petite, graceful girl, with her night-black hair swathed in a silky garland round her head, and her white shoulders and neck emerging from an admirably-cut dinner-gown of creamy charmeuse and chiffon patterned by rose-pink beadwork, whose colour echoed the soft flush in her cheeks.
Just before dinner, Theo, in the school-room, with all her eyes and half the voice-power at her command, had told me the dress was divine, and that I looked a little angel in it!
“Angel?” H’m. That wasn’t how I felt, exactly. Still I know I looked my best; as pretty as ever I’d looked in the dear old days before I had anything else to do.
Looking her best always keys a girl up to doing her best.
(Or her worst, as the case may be.)
Besides, another glance at the Governor had shown me that I’d been right in my suspicion at dinner. He was embarrassed. He was—probably for the first time in his life—shy!
This put the finishing touch to my feeling myself to be—also for the first time—mistress of this situation.
Therefore, I stood there, still waiting, looking as if it were I who were paralysed with shyness, deliberately waiting for him to speak.