“If I hadn’t been a duffer, Miss Dale, I might have placed your sister immediately when I met her, for I have had the minutest descriptions of you both, I assure you. There was something very baffling about her that night, as if I must have known her or at least seen her before somewhere, but—”
“But you did not expect to see us in society, perhaps?”
He glanced at her as if the better to understand if her tone were cynical, but her bland little smile told him nothing and before he could make any reply she said:
“I am afraid we have strayed too far from important things, Mr. Renshawe. It is shocking of me to encroach upon your time. Is there anything we can do for you in a business way?” She told Julie afterward she was quite proud of this little speech, for she had been consumed with a desire to ask him a thousand questions about the Driscoes.
Renshawe interpreted it to mean that the chat was at an end and he feared that in some clumsy way he had offended her, but she steered him into a discussion of the order he had come to leave with such a calm matter-of-fact air that he found himself consulting her about salads and cakes with an ease he would not have believed possible when he entered the room. He had never been brought into business relations with a young girl of her position and he admired exceedingly her manner. The order having been arranged quite to his satisfaction he dismissed the subject and made up his mind to have his say in spite of the cue Hester had given him. So as he rose to leave he said:
“I hope you will forgive me, Miss Dale, if I tell you I feel quite as if I knew you and your sister and I am immensely glad to meet you. You see the Blakes took me frequently to Wavertree Hall and Miss Nannie spoke of you so often; she—”
“Dear little Nan,” the girl said musingly, “how I should love to see her!”
The man looked as if he would like to echo that sentiment, but he only said as he moved toward the door:
“Will you be very kind, Miss Dale, and let Mrs. Lennox bring me some time to see you and your sister? I have so many messages from Virginia, for Miss Nannie was confident I should meet you and you see she was right.”
“Indeed you may come,” said Hester frankly, “we—we do not receive many visitors, but I know Julie will be glad to see you—I shall too,” genuinely, and not as if politeness prompted this after-thought.