Napier didn't much like this familiarity with a Christian name on the part of a stranger. "Yes. I'm Gavan Napier."
"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Napier." She held out her hand.
He said nothing, only glanced round the hall in an undecided fashion after releasing her hand, and then put his letters down on the nearest chair. "I hope I'm not in your way," the girl said. "You see, I don't know at all what private secretaries do. You are the first one I ever met."
He laughed, and said they were a good deal like other people so far as he'd observed, and didn't do anything in particular.
Miss Ellis declared she knew better than that. "That's where you sit, isn't it?"—she nodded at the big table—"writing your state documents. And I suppose everybody goes by on tiptoe. And nobody dares speak to you ... and of course I oughtn't to be here!"
"Oh, yes, you ought."
"No. I ought by rights to be out by the firs. But I was cold. I didn't see why I should wait out by the firs when there was a fire here doing nobody any good."
She misinterpreted his steady look. "Oh, my! you think I ought to have gone out and waited by the...!"
"Nothing of the sort! I shouldn't have thought half so well of you if you'd gone out and waited by the firs."
But the wing-capped head with its overweight of hair turned anxiously toward the staircase by which Greta had vanished. "I've often heard Greta say, 'The great thing is to learn instinctive obedience.'"