He puzzled her; he piqued her; he annoyed her; he made her nervous.
What were his feelings towards herself?
"He is so horribly slow," she mused now fretfully, "he ponders every word he says. I suppose he is terribly afraid of making a mistake. I am sure his money oppresses him. He must have been ever so much nicer when he was working as a foreman, or drayman, or whatever he was before all this money came to him."
She kept her eyes turned resolutely away from Haverford. For perversely enough, though he was so slow, so silent, so dull, he was exceedingly good to look at. Old-fashioned, or rather out of the fashion, he might be, but his manners were irreproachable, and his speech cultured, and he dressed very well.
It came to Camilla as an inspiration, as the car moved on cautiously through the cold white fog, that he was only shy and perhaps stupid.
Rupert Haverford had certainly a good amount of diffidence in his disposition, but at the present moment it was the most exquisite, and the most real sense of hospitality that tinged even his protective courtesy with restraint.
When their hostess had deserted the motor after luncheon, and had insisted in making her way homeward in a hired carriage, Haverford had been delighted because Mrs. Lancing had elected to return with him. But this very fact—the fact that this woman, who had been charming herself into his inmost thoughts of late, was alone with him, charged him with a sense of responsibility, and he steeled himself carefully against even a suggestion of the delicious intimacy with which the situation was fraught.
"The fog is lifting," he said, after a little while; "if we can only get off this road and turn inland, we shall drive out of it altogether."
Mrs. Lancing had her muff in front of her face; the fog made everything damp; her veil was clinging to her face uncomfortably.
"We are going downhill now," she said indistinctly.