“Con—excuse me,” he corrected himself, “but I think that I had better go and see after my cousin.”
He caught up his hat with marked annoyance, and Jill stood gaping now at him still too astonished for words. She watched him go in silence, and then sat down on the twill covered box and drew a long breath—a sort of letting off steam in order to prevent an explosion.
“Well of all the inconceivable, incomparable, extraordinary, and revolting imbeciles that I have ever come across that girl is the worst,” she ejaculated. “Thank heaven that my mind is not of that grovelling order which sees vulgarity in nature and coarseness where there should only be refinement. What agonies such people must endure at times; they can never go to a gallery that’s certain, and I suppose they would blush at sight of a doll. Oh! my dear saint, why ever did you bring such a person here, I wonder?”
And then she sat and stared at his empty chair and saw in retrospection the expression of vexed reproach in his eyes as he had risen to his feet, their mute enquiry.
“Could you not have spared me this? Was it necessary?”
And in equally mute response her heart made answer,—
“Not necessary perhaps; but I’m not a bit sorry that it happened all the same.”