In that short interruption Johnson had found time to escape, not by the front-door, but back to the card-room, and Mr. Candover, who looked more excited than he usually allowed himself to appear, asked Audrey why she looked so cross.
She was strung up, agitated, eager for the contest with this man whose subtle advice always led her into such difficult places.
“Do I?” she said, putting strong constraint upon herself, and forcing herself to speak calmly, though her eyes blazed and her lips trembled. “Well, I think I am cross. At any rate I’m disgusted, and I’m sure, if you can’t guess all the reasons why I am so, you know some of them at least.”
“Let us come in here, where we can talk,” said he, as he opened the door of the conservatory, near which they were standing. He arranged for her one of the cane-seated lounge chairs which stood about among the flowers, and invited her, with a winning smile, to seat herself in the pile of cushions which he collected from the other seats round him. But she would not sit down. She felt at greater advantage when she could move about, and meet his eyes on the same level as her own.
He was determined to help her in his own way, and he was, she knew, prepared to do battle with her over her fixed resolve to abandon the career he had mapped out for her. And weak though she always felt in the presence of this man with the various arts which he knew so well how to use, the crisis had come, and she felt that she would, she must be strong enough to resist his will.
“Now,” said he, leaning back against the glass wall that shut them in, and looking at her with his usual placid and amiable smile, “what is the matter?”
“I’m going away from this place,” said Audrey bluntly. “I don’t like the people who come here, and I don’t like the scenes I am exposed to. And I’m sure you know why.”
He had changed his attitude, and his handsome face expressed great astonishment and perplexity.
“But we have talked that out, and I thought you had seen the necessity of taking the rough with the smooth,” objected he. “What are you going to do if you give this up?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Audrey angrily. “But I won’t have noisy men like the Angmerings here, and I won’t be exposed to the insults of their father any longer.”