“No,” replied Peggy, “neither do I. But I thought...”
“Perhaps,” said Mr Musgrave quickly, “you left it in the kitchen. I will tell the servants to look. It shall be returned to you.”
“I had it,” Peggy persisted, “when I was talking with you in the hall.”
“Yes?” he said. “Then—then perhaps it is there. It shall be found.”
A spirit of wickedness entered into Peggy.
“Never mind,” she said brightly. “It serves me right if I have lost it. Don’t trouble to hunt for it, Mr Musgrave. I came back because I thought I might find it near the gate; but plainly it isn’t here. Good-bye again.”
She held out a determined hand. Mr Musgrave was faced with the greatest dilemma he had ever experienced. What was he to do? Courtesy demanded that he should take her hand; to ignore it would be unpardonable. To extend the left hand was equally impossible; to offer the right was to acknowledge his duplicity, and might lead to an altogether wrong conception of his motives. A man when he acts upon impulse is not necessarily guided by any motive. For the fraction of a second he hesitated; then, with perfect gravity, he drew his arm from behind his back, and with the hand still wearing the torn fragments of the lost glove he silently touched her fingers. Peggy’s grey eyes were on his face; they did not fall, he observed, once to his hand. He felt grateful to her. A little tact—and tact is but the dictates of a kindly nature—smoothes over many awkward situations.
He returned with her to the gate and opened it for her, and raised his hat gravely as she passed through, to be greeted with boisterous effusiveness by Diogenes, who had reluctantly waited outside.
“He’s rather a dear, Diogenes,” she said, as she proceeded down the road, a little more soberly now. “He made me feel a little mean female cad.”
John Musgrave, returning along the path, drew off the torn glove and slipped it into his pocket. Another link had been formed in the chain of impressions.