What he saw was Miss Selby coming home from a walk with Mr. Quincey. She was carrying a small bouquet of violets, so he supposed that she had been in the woods—in those same woods—and with Mr. Quincey. So Mr. Anderson did go to tea with Mrs. Granger.
Mrs. Granger said he might come on Wednesday evening, and he went. She played on the piano and sang for him, and he praised her music so much that she was charmingly confused. Never did she guess that it was not admiration that moved him, but pity because she made so many mistakes in technique.
And he accounted all these mistakes to her credit; he thought, like many another man, that the worse her performance in any art, the more domestic and womanly she must be. He felt a fine, chivalrous regard for the poor thing.
But still he kept waiting for some sign of relenting on the part of Miss Selby. Every evening, as he crossed the dining room to the little table he thought that perhaps tonight it would be different; perhaps tonight it would be as it had been during that time when they had talked to each other.
Of course, if she didn’t care, he wasn’t going to force his unwelcome conversation upon her. She was a woman; it was her place to make the first move.
What had he done, anyhow? Maybe he had been a little hasty, but at least he hadn’t laughed at her, or ever had the slightest desire to do such a thing. And if, in her unreasonable feminine way, she wanted him to apologize for things he hadn’t done, he was ready so to do—if she would make the first move.
“Very well!” thought Miss Selby every evening when she saw him. “If he’s satisfied to—to let things go on like this, I’m sure I don’t care.”
She was much better able to wear a calm expression of not caring than he was. He looked dejected and sulky. But when out of the public eye, he did better than she, for he merely walked up and down his room, or gazed out gloomily upon those depressing trees, while she, locked in her own room, often cried.
The next Sunday it rained, but nevertheless he went out early in the afternoon, and Miss Selby knew very well where he was going.
“Let him!” she said to herself. “If he’s so easily taken in by that—that designing woman and her dog, I don’t care! She’s probably trained the dog to behave like that.”