"Watch out!" warned Bunny. "They're coming!"
There was a hint of nervousness in his voice also. She heard it, and swiftly rose. When their own door opened, she was standing beside him, very upright, very pale, rigidly composed.
Her mother entered, flushed and smiling. Behind her came her accepted lover,--a large, florid man, handsome in ascertain coarse style, with a dissipated look about the eyes which told its own tale. Maud quivered in impotent resentment whenever she encountered those eyes. They could not look upon a woman with reverence.
He strolled into the room in her mother's wake, fondling a dark moustache, in evident good humour with himself and all the world.
Lady Brian ran to her daughter with all a girl's impetuosity. "My dear, it's all settled!" she declared. "Giles and I are going to be married, and we're all going to live at "The Anchor" with him. And dear little Bunny is to have the best ground-floor rooms. Now, isn't that kind?"
It was kind. Yet Maud stiffened to an even icier frigidity at the news, and dear little Bunny's nose turned up to an aggressive angle.
After a distinct pause, Maud bent her long neck and coldly kissed her mother's expectant face. "I hope you--and Mr. Sheppard will be very happy," she said.
The happy suitor broke into his loud, self-satisfied laugh. "Egad, what an enthusiastic reception!" he cried. "Have you got a similar chaste salute for me?"
He swaggered towards her, and Maud froze as she stood. Her eyes shot a blue flare of open enmity at him; and--almost in spite of himself--Giles Sheppard paused.
"By Jove!" he said. "You've got a she-wolf here, madam."