He was handsomely dressed in his usual accurate unexaggerated style, in a light gray morning suit, and he had an air of perfect leisure about him, simple leisure which was not without its charm.
It was the kind of manner which pleases women who live in a business atmosphere, among men who are generally either occupied or over-tired; it said so intelligibly, 'Here I am entirely devoted to your service, having got everything off my mind but yourself.'
As all the women of his acquaintance knew Trenton Warren to be as busy a man as his fellows, the compliment was real, and so the manner was effective. He was decidedly liked by women; perhaps the solitary exception to that rule was the one woman for whom he wore this manner most elaborately, most watchfully, most invariably. But Helen Griswold did not like even the air of leisure which was so captivating to other women. It had the misfortune to link itself to the one drawback, the one discomfort, the one injury of her life, and so, woman-like, she distorted its meaning, she refused its tribute.
He, too, she bitterly thought, had the presumption to regard her as an ornament, as a being incompetent to fill a serious and sympathetic place in her husband's life; he, too, held that women should be excused from business, and so he came to her a totally unreal creature, a drawing-room lounger, with malice in his quiet smile and insulting depreciation under his deferential address, and the acquiescence in her uselessness which encouraged Alston in his one fault, and made her heart sick with a powerless anger, to which her unerring woman's instinct, as she called it--the least trustworthy guide any woman can follow except within a very limited track--assured her that Trenton Warren was perfectly conscious.
He had never found her in a less conciliatory humour than on the present occasion. The undefined struggle in her own heart, the signs that a great change was passing over her, the introspection which had been so entirely foreign to her mind and habits, the little lingering bitterness which had mingled with the solemn tenderness of a parting with Alston, imparted into it by her feeling that she in reality knew nothing about the purpose and details of the business which was taking him so far away from her for so long; all this had prepared her to receive his visit with anything but welcome. And as he looked at her he knew that, too, and she saw that he knew it.
Helen Griswold was not sufficiently a woman of the world to be mistress of those fine shades of manners which are such powerful weapons on the woman's side of social warfare; but she conveyed to Trenton Warren with quite sufficient accuracy a sense that she expected him to deliver his message and go, before they had exchanged two sentences. She did not take her customary seat, but placed herself on an ordinary chair in an attitude which had a provoking coolness about it; and she looked over, not at Trenton.
He had seen her husband later than she had; her husband's parting words had been for him; would she not display some curiosity as to the final interview--some interest? Not she; not a jot! So he made up his mind at once that he would not use any ménagements with her, but show her at once and plainly the position in which 'that enviable ass, Griswold'--for thus Mr. Trenton Warren called his confiding absent friend in his thoughts--had placed her.
'You have some business to be communicated to my husband, I believe?' said poor Helen, with her very best imitation of slightly patronising unconcern.
'O dear, no,' replied Warren, putting his hand into his breast-pocket and taking out a letter. 'I have no business to communicate to Mr. Griswold; my commission is from him.'
`To me?' The colour flushed over her face.