Maud had not the faintest wish to look charming, but yet again she could not refuse to gratify a wish so amiably expressed. She donned the white silk, therefore, though feeling in any but a festive mood, and prepared herself for the ordeal with a grim determination to escape from it as soon as possible.
She was not tall, but her extreme slenderness gave her a decidedly regal pose. She held her head proudly and bore herself with distinction. Her eyes--those wonderful blue-violet eyes--had the aloof expression of one whose soul is far away.
Giles Sheppard watched her enter the drawing-room behind her mother, and a bitter sneer crossed his bloated face. He was utterly incapable of appreciating that innate pride of race that expressed itself in every line of her. He read only contempt for him and his in the girl's still face, and the deep resentment kindled the night before began to smoulder within him with an ever-increasing heat. How dared she show her airs and graces here?-- She, a penniless minx dependent now upon his charity for the very bread she ate!
He turned with an ugly jest at her expense upon his lips to the man with whom he had been talking at her entrance; but the jest was checked unuttered. For the man, square, thickset as a bulldog, abruptly left his side and moved forward.
The quick blood mounted in Maud's face as he intercepted her. She looked at him for a second as if she would turn and flee. But he held out a steady hand to her, and she had to place hers within it.
In a moment his peculiar voice accosted her. "You remember me, Miss Brian? I'm Jake Bolton--the horse breaker. I had the pleasure of doing your brother a small service yesterday."
Both hand and voice reassured her. She had an absurd feeling that he was meting out to her such treatment as he would have considered suitable for a nervous horse. She forced herself to smile upon him; it was the only thing to do.
He smiled in return--his pleasant open smile. "Remember me now?" he said.
"Quite well," she answered.
"Good!" he said briefly. "Let me find you a chair! I don't suppose you know many of the people here."