But she never failed to shrink when the twinkling eyes rested upon her with the disturbed questioning in their glance, and the consciousness of this shrinking was very bitter to her in secret.
When her guest approached her on the evening before referred to, she detected at once that he was not in a condition of mind altogether unruffled. The glances he cast on those about him were not encouraging, and the few nods of recognition he bestowed were far from cordial; his hair stood on end a trifle more aggressively than usual, and his short, stout body expressed a degree of general dissatisfaction which it was next to impossible to ignore.
Bertha did not attempt to ignore it.
"I will tell you something before you speak to me," she said. "Something has put you out of humor."
He gave her a sharp glance, and then looked away over the heads of the crowd.
"There is always enough to put a man out of humor," he said. "What a lot of people you have here to-night! What do they come for?"
"I have just been telling Mr. Arbuthnot some of the reasons," she answered. "They are very few of them good ones. You came hoping to recover your spirits."
"I came to look at you," he said.
He was frequently blunt, but there was a bluntness about this speech which surprised her. She answered him with a laugh, however.