Her husband came toward her, and she turned quickly to face him, lest he should suspect her of trying to avoid his eye. To what duplicity was she already committed!
Ransom laid a friendly hand on her arm: "Come along, Margaret. You know I speak for the bar." She was aware, in his voice, of a little note of surprise at his having to remind her of this.
"Oh, yes. I meant to go, of course—"
"Well, then—" He opened his dressing-room door, and caught a glimpse of the retreating house-maid's skirt. "Here's Maria now. Maria! Call up Mr. Dawnish—at Mrs. Creswell's, you know. Tell him Mrs. Ransom wants him to go with her to hear the speeches this evening—the speeches, you understand?—and he's to call for her at a quarter before nine."
Margaret heard the Irish "Yessir" on the stairs, and stood motionless, while her husband added loudly: "And bring me some towels when you come up." Then he turned back into his wife's room.
"Why, it would be a thousand pities for Guy to miss this. He's so interested in the way we do things over here—and I don't know that he's ever heard me speak in public." Again the slight note of fatuity! Was it possible that Ransom was a fatuous man?
He paused in front of her, his short-sighted unobservant glance concentrating itself unexpectedly on her face.
"You're not going like that, are you?" he asked, with glaring eye-glasses.
"Like what?" she faltered, lifting a conscious hand to the velvet at her throat.
"With your hair in such a fearful mess. Have you been shampooing it? You look like the Brant girl at the end of a tennis-match."