Katherine had the kind of voice which people listen to, and one or two of the men glanced round at her when she answered with thanks that she had a capital view. And old Colonel Hawthorne said to a young guardsman friend of Miss Betty d'Estaire that, by Jove! Her Ladyship's secretary, or the children's governess, or whoever she was, had a pair of eyes worth looking at!
Gerard Strobridge had found Läo charming again! He had dined well and partaken of his aunt's promised very best champagne, and he had indulged in some obviously subtle insinuations as to his further intentions in regard to their enjoyable friendship, whispered in her shell-pink ear while the lights were low.
"Oh Gerard!—I won't allow you to!—Wait—not yet!" Mrs. Delemar had gasped prettily, expecting him to press the matter further.
But unfortunately it was just then that the lights had blazed up, and Gerard had turned round and caught sight of the provoking face of Katherine Bush as his aunt spoke.
"How attractive that confounded girl looks!" he thought. "What a nuisance she is not married and a guest, instead of the typist—it is undignified and—difficult!"
But the brief glance had disturbed him and rearoused his interest; he found that he could not bring himself up to the desired level of enthusiasm again with Läo, and contented himself by talking enigmatically about the parrot rooms that she was in—their situation and their comfort—while he looked unutterable things with his deep grey eyes. Then presently when they all moved, and the show was over, he allowed himself to be supplanted in her favours by a promising youth of three and twenty, a distant cousin of the house, who would not have been permitted the ghost of a chance at another time! But Gerard's emotions did not show on the surface and Katherine Bush slipped up to bed presently in rather a depressed frame of mind.
She realised fully that the goal was yet a long, long way from attainment, and that it would require all her intelligence to walk warily through this coming week.
No one had been in the least slighting or unkind to her, but naturally no one had troubled to converse with her; she was just the secretary and was treated exactly as she would treat her own, when she had one, she felt. It would not be safe to attract any of the party; her employer's good will and contentment with her mattered far more than the gratification of her vanity.
Mr. Strobridge, however, was one of the chief pieces in her game, and him she would see often as long as she remained in Lady Garribardine's service, so there was no hurry—she could afford to wait.
But all the same she settled down to read "The Seven Lamps of Architecture" without the buoyant feeling of self-confidence which usually gave her such a proud carriage of head.