Having thus seated his guests, the man stood in an inquiring attitude, surreptitiously glancing at Joyce who seemed to him almost superhumanly beautiful in that dusty place, for her pink flush and shy eyes only accentuated her charms. She found it necessary to explain the intrusion at once, but was so nervous over just the right form of self-introduction required that she rather lost her head, and stammered out,
"I—I thought I'd like to see the works and—and you"—then stopped, feeling how awkward was this beginning.
A smile flitted over his grave countenance.
"I am before you," he said, bowing somewhat elaborately. "If looking at me can do anybody any good——"
She checked him with a somewhat imperious gesture.
"I am Joyce Lavillotte," she said, growing cool again, "and I would like to look the place over."
The sentence died into silence before an ejaculation so amazed and long-drawn it made Joyce's eyes open wide. The man looked ready to burst into laughter, yet full of respect, too. At length he broke out,
"I beg your pardon! I am so surprised. I supposed you were a man. It's your name, probably, that deceived me—and then I never thought of a girl—a young lady—caring to examine into things, and asking for statistics, and so on. Then your handwriting—it was so bold. And your methods of expression—well, I have been completely fooled!"
He stopped the voluble flow of words, which Joyce felt instinctively to be unlike himself, and gazed at her again in a forgetfulness somewhat embarrassing. Joyce was trying to think of something to say when he broke out once more, "Yes, I supposed of course you were a man, and not so very young, either. I had pictured you the moral image of your father"—he stopped an instant, then asked with a sort of regretful note in his voice—"he was your father?"
"Yes," said Joyce coldly. "Only I bear my mother's name for certain private reasons."