"He has often called you that; but,"—shyly,—"now that I have seen you, I don't think the name suits you a bit."
Sir Nicholas is quite pleased. There is a sort of unconscious flattery in the gravity of her tone and expression that amuses almost as much as it pleases him. What a funny child she is! and how unspeakably lovely! Will Doatie like her?
But there is yet another introduction to be gone through. From the doorway Violet Mansergh comes up to Geoffrey clad in some soft pale shimmering stuff, and holds out to him her hand.
"What a time you have been away!" she says, with a pretty, slow smile, that has not a particle of embarrassment or consciousness in it, though she is quite aware that Jack Rodney is watching her closely. Perhaps, indeed, she is secretly amused at his severe scrutiny.
"You will introduce me to your wife?" she asks, after a few minutes, in her even, trainante voice, and is then taken up to the big arm-chair before the fire, and is made known to Mona.
"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes: of course we shall excuse your dressing to-night," says Lady Rodney, addressing her son far more than Mona, though the words presumably are meant for her. Whereupon Mona, rising from her chair with a sigh of relief, follows Geoffrey out of the room and upstairs.
"Well?" says Sir Nicholas, as a deadly silence continues for some time after their departure, "what do you think of her?"
"She is painfully deficient; positively without brains," says Lady Rodney, with conviction. "What was the answer she made me when I asked about the carriage? Something utterly outside the mark."
"She is not brainless; she was only frightened. It certainly was an ordeal coming to a house for the first time to be, in effect, stared at. And she is very young."
"And perhaps unused to society," puts in Violet, mildly. As she speaks she picks up a tiny feather that has clung to her gown, and lightly blows it away from her into the air.