“Really?” he answered, turning to Delia. “Well, that is plucky of you, Miss Calmour.” And both thought to read in the high approval expressed in his look and tone a shade of regret that she should be exposed to the necessity of being overworked at all.
They talked on, and soon their visitor became acquainted with all the family doings—of the third sister, who was away also working; of Bob and another brother in Canada, and three more at school; then of other things, and Wagram was surprised to note how well they talked. He had made up his mind to pay this call from a sense of duty, and had approached it with considerable misgiving. One girl he had already seen, and she had impressed him favourably, yet how would she show up under the circumstances of a surprise visit? For the others he had expected to find very second-rate types, possibly overdressed, certainly underbred; forward and gushing or awkwardly shy. But in these two, each more than ordinarily attractive after her different type, he had found nothing of the kind. There was an ease of manner and entire freedom from affectation about them that fairly astonished him, remembering the repute in which the family was apparently held; and, realising it, they went up in his estimation accordingly. Both were at their best, and knew it.
But through it all came the recollection of that action for breach of promise. Which of them was concerned in it, he wondered; or was it the absent one? Well, there was no finding out now. Yet somehow, he did not think it could be Delia. If it were either of these two he would rather think it was Clytie; and then, suddenly, it occurred to him to wonder why on earth he was troubling his head about it at all. He had paid his duty call, and there was an end of the whole matter. But—was there?
“So sorry father was out, Mr Wagram,” said Clytie as he rose to take his leave, “and so will he be. But, perhaps, if you are in Bassingham again and are inclined to drop in for a cup of tea, I know he’ll be delighted.”
Wagram, as in duty bound, declared that the pleasure would be mutual. It was strange, he said, that he did not even know Major Calmour by sight; but he was so seldom in Bassingham, and had not been very long at the Court, for the matter of that.
“We pulled that off well, Delia,” said Clytie as they returned from seeing their visitor to the gate. “He’s gone away thinking no small beer of us. He had heard all sorts of beastly things said about us, and came to see if they were true, and has come to the conclusion they are not.”
“Why do you think that?”
Clytie smiled pityingly.
“My dear child, I never saw the man yet I couldn’t read like a book, even in matters far more complicated than that, and not often a woman. Never mind. I’ll back you up all I know how if you’ll go on playing up to me as you did just now. Oh, good Lord! there’s the old man, and—he’s ‘fresh.’”
For a volley of raucous profanity had swamped her last words, and over the top of the front gate a face was visible—a very red face indeed, surmounted by a hat awry. The profanity was evoked by its utterer’s natural inability to open a locked gate by the simple process of pushing and battering against the same. Delia looked troubled.