Later in the evening, when she would have escaped upstairs, she was detained and made to play and sing. She accompanied Jack Rotherfield in his songs, receiving his thanks and compliments upon her skill with coldness and shrinking which she did her best, not very successfully, to hide.
When she went upstairs she had a good cry. Sir Robert, the one of all the rest whom she liked and respected, had been slightly conscious, towards the end of the evening, of a difference in her manner, and had been perplexed and slightly displeased by it, while the two persons who overwhelmed her with civility and kindness were those from whom she would have preferred to receive as little attention as possible.
Truly her position was growing difficult, and she was sure that before long it would be impossible.
However, on the following day she recovered her spirits a little, feeling so sure that she would not stay long at the Mill-house that she determined to enjoy her time there as much as she could, and to trouble herself as little as possible about those causes of uneasiness which she could not help.
After a pleasant morning with Caryl, she was whirled off to Canterbury in the motor-car with Lady Sarah, Jack Rotherfield, and Lady Aileen, enjoyed herself in spite of her own wishes, and was landed with Lady Aileen at the door of the Priory in time for tea.
Lady Eridge was most gracious, and so were her two daughters, while the marquis, who came in quietly while they were all chatting round the little fire, without which the marchioness always felt chilly when the sun went down, was kind and good-natured, asked Rhoda the same questions two or three times over, and being rather deaf, always failed to catch the answers.
It was not until Lady Eridge had found an opportunity to speak to the visitor apart from the rest, that she broached the subject which Rhoda felt must have been in her thoughts all the time.
“And so you like the life at the Mill-house?” she began, after she had looked round nervously, and put out one waxlike hand to try to detect the bugbear of her sheltered life, “a draught.”
“Oh, yes, I like it very much. They are all kind to me, and I’m as fond of Caryl as if I’d lived with him for years.”
“And I hear you are a great help to Sir Robert?”