Was her friendship with this man finished? Had her frankness overreached itself? Just what did that kiss mean? Here was a character not so easy to read as Gerard Strobridge's. Here was a will perhaps as strong as her own. Her face was very pale, and those concentrated grey-green eyes looked stormy and resentful.
The Duke reached the smoking-room and was seated at the writing-table only one moment before the room was invaded by Lady Garribardine.
"Poor Mordryn! You had to take refuge here! I fear those charming creatures I have invited for you are proving a little fatiguing."
"Frankly, Seraphim, they bore me to death."
"Two others are coming of a different type presently. But you are safe in this corner. Most of them do not know I have moved the smoking-room to this wing."
"I think it is a great improvement."
Her Ladyship looked at him out of the tail of her eye, but she said, quite innocently:
"Yes, Gerard always says so." Then she left him to his letters, with a word as to tea and a cosy talk in her boudoir after it.
So Gerard liked this room, too! Miss Bush was with him at the House. She dined at Brook Street. Then Mordryn frowned and looked the very image of the Iron Duke, and did not even begin to write an order which he had intended to send his agent. His mind was disturbed. Every word Katherine had said had made a deep impression upon him.
The father an auctioneer—the grandfather a butcher! And this girl a peerless creature fit for a throne! But if she were fit for heaven, there were still quite insurmountable barriers between even ordinary acquaintance with her. He rather thought he would leave Blissington on Sunday night.