“No. I don’t often get the opportunity,” she answered; and there was, he fancied, a note of regret in her voice. “Mrs Graham likes to be read to after dinner—or we work.”
The description of the manner in which her evenings were passed did not sound enlivening. He wondered that any girl should submit to these dull conditions, that girls could be found to fill such servile posts.
“Do you never get any time off?” he asked.
“It’s off-time to-day,” she admitted, smiling suddenly. “Mrs Graham has a sick headache. When she has a headache no one is allowed near her. Sometimes they last three days. She is subject to them.”
“Then,” he said promptly, in the manner of one making a statement which admits no contradiction, “you can come to-night... Will you?” he added tentatively.
“Will I come—on the beach?” she asked in an undecided tone, as though uncertain that she apprehended him rightly. “You mean after dinner?”
“Yes,” he returned. “It will be jolly if you do.”
She hesitated; and he noticed in her eyes, before she averted them and looked seaward, a shadow like a tiny doubt passing over the clear surface of her mind.
“I... It is a little unusual,” she said, the perplexed eyes in the glittering distance.
“That’s tantamount to a refusal, I suppose?” he said, feeling nettled and unaccountably disappointed. “Perhaps I ought not to have proposed it; but it occurred to me that it would be pleasant. I’m sorry. I didn’t wish to embarrass you.”