"Well, Harris—my head-gardener—doesn't approve. Thinks it's infra dig. He told me once that he knew ladies enjoyed making parlours of their conservatories, and letting in draughts and killing the plants; but he was a nursery-man himself. However, I've broken him in to it. Oh, I say, there's no milk!"
"I don't take it. Clare—a friend of mine—never does, so I've got accustomed to it." She drank thirstily. "Oh, it's good! I didn't know I wanted my tea so."
"I did," he said significantly.
She coloured painfully: she would not look at him.
"I was very tired," she said lamely.
"Were you?" he asked her. "You weren't gone half an hour. Do you know it's only half-past three?"
He was very gentle; but she felt herself accused. She played uneasily with her rope of beads as she chose her words. Roger, for all his intentness, could not help noticing how white and slender her hands showed, stained though they were with hyacinth-milk, as they fingered the blue, glancing chain. They were thin though; and following the outline of her wrist and arm and bare neck, he thought her cheek, for all its smooth youthfulness, was thin also, too thin—altogether too austere, for her age and way of life. She had always been flushed in his presence, delightfully flushed with laughter, or anger, or embarrassment, and he had noticed nothing beyond her pretty colour. But now, he saw uneasily that there were hollows round her eyes, as if she slept little, and that there were hollows as well as dimples in her cheeks. He was astonished to find himself not a little perturbed at his discovery, so perturbed that he did not, for a moment, realise that she was speaking to him.
"I am very sorry," she was saying. "I'm afraid you thought—I'm afraid I was rather silly—in the wood. I was disturbed when you found me." Her words came jerkily. "I had not expected—that is—I did not expect——" She broke off. Her eyes implored him to leave her alone.
He would not understand their appeal.
"Yes, you expected——" he prompted her.