Morris listened, understood in a sort of passion of sympathy, and looked all the while at her beautiful, unsmiling face.
He noticed that she was strangely impersonal. She hardly spoke of people at all, except once, when she said, “I have always got Francie. I love her better than anyone in the world.” Of her guardian she did not say anything. But a lesser intuition than that of Morris Severing would have felt an intense rebelliousness to be the keynote of her whole life at Porthlew.
The magic afternoon sped by, and the shadows lengthened across the grass.
Hazel Tregaskis called “Rosamund!” from the terrace, and they looked at one another with eyes that had suddenly awakened to another reality.
Morris sprang to his feet.
“Thank you, Rosamund,” he said softly.
Suddenly the laugh appeared again in his blue eyes.
“Do you know, we’ve known one another four—five—years, and I’ve never really found you till last night!”
“I don’t think I found myself till you played the Hungarian dance,” Rosamund told him seriously.
Hazel did not express any surprise at seeing Morris Severing. He surmised that she would not often express surprise. The charming assurance which characterized her seemed to imply that Hazel Tregaskis would accept or ignore very much as she chose, with little or no reference to any standards but her own.