Now Portia, being strange to the household, is a little frightened, and a good deal grieved by this passage at arms.
"Is it really so bad as they would have us think?" she says, in a low tone, to Sir Mark, whom she has beckoned to her side. "Is it really all over between them?"
"Oh, dear, no!" says Sir Mark, with the fine smile that characterizes his lean, dark face. "Don't make yourself unhappy; we are quite accustomed to their idiosyncrasies by this time; you, of course, have yet much to learn. But, when I tell you that, to my certain knowledge, they have bid each other an eternal adieu every week during the past three years, you will have your first lesson in the art of understanding them."
"Ah! you give me hope," says Portia, smiling.
At this moment Mr. Gower enters the room.
"Ah! how d'ye do!" says Dulce, nestling up to him, her soft skirts making a gentle frou-frou as she moves; "so glad you have come. You are late, are you not?" She gives him her hand, and smiles up into his eyes. To all the others her excessive cordiality means only a desire to chagrin Dare, to Stephen Gower it means—well, perhaps, at this point of their acquaintance he hardly knows what it means—but it certainly heightens her charms in his sight.
"Am I?" he says, in answer to her remark. "That is just what has been puzzling me. My watch has gone to the bad, and all the way here I have felt as if the distance between my place and the Hall was longer than I had ever known it before. If I am to judge by my own impatience to be here, I am late, indeed."
She smiles again at this, and says, softly:
"You are not wet, I hope? Such a day to come out. It was a little rash, was it not?"
With the gentlest air of solicitude she lays one little white jeweled hand upon his coat sleeve, as though to assure herself no rain had alighted there. Gower laughs gaily.