Anna’s demeanour was still imperturbable, her marble pallor untinged by the slightest flush of colour. She regarded him coldly, as though wondering whether he had anything further to say. Sir John hesitated, and then continued.
“I trust,” he said, “that you will recognize the justice of these conditions. Under happier circumstances nothing would have given me more pleasure than to have offered you a home with your sister. You yourself, I am sure, recognize how impossible you have made it for me now to do anything of the sort. I may say that the amount of the annuity I propose to allow you is two hundred a year.”
Anna looked for a moment steadily at her sister, whose face was still averted. Then she moved towards the door. Before she passed out she turned and faced Sir John. The impassivity of her features changed at last. Her eyes were lit with mirth, the corners of her mouth quivered.
“Really, Sir John,” she said, “I don’t know how to thank you. I can understand now these newspapers when they talk of your magnificent philanthropy. It is magnificent indeed. And yet—you millionaires should really, I think, cultivate the art of discrimination. I am so much obliged to you for your projected benevolence. Frankly, it is the funniest thing which has ever happened to me in my life. I shall like to think of it—whenever I feel dull. Good-bye, Anna!”
Annabel sprang up. Sir John waved her back.
“Do I understand you then to refuse my offer?” he asked Anna.
She shot a sudden glance at him. Sir John felt hot and furious. It was maddening to be made to feel that he was in any way the inferior of this cool, self-possessed young woman, whose eyes seemed for a moment to scintillate with scorn. There were one or two bitter moments in his life when he had been made to feel that gentility laid on with a brush may sometimes crack and show weak places—that deportment and breeding are after all things apart. Anna went out.
Her cheeks burned for a moment or two when she reached the street, although she held her head upright and walked blithely, even humming to herself fragments of an old French song. And then at the street corner she came face to face with Nigel Ennison.
“I won’t pretend,” he said, “that this is an accident. The fates are never so kind to me. As a matter of fact I have been waiting for you.”