What was it that I had been thinking out there in those gloomy halls? That she would greet me with a pathetic, hurt look and...
"Good morning!" she cried gaily. Hurt? Pathetic? She was radiant! "So glad to see you again. Hawkes has told me how busy you've been." She dried her hands on the abbreviated apron of Helen Marie Louise Antoinette and then quite composedly extended one for me to shake.
I bowed low over it. "Awfully, awfully busy," I murmured. Was it relief at finding her so happy and unconcerned that swept through me? I am morally, but shamelessly certain it wasn't!
"Don't you think the roses are lovely in that old silver bowl?"
"Exquisite."
"Blatchford found it in the plate vault," she said, standing off to admire the effect. "Do you mind if I go on arranging them?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer resumed her employment.
"Bon jour, m'sieur," said Helen Marie Louise Antoinette over her mistress's shoulder. One never knows whether a French maid is polite or merely spiteful.
"It seems ages since I saw you last," said the Countess in a matter-of-fact tone, jiggling a rose into position and then standing off to study the effect, her head cocked prettily at an angle of inquiry.
It suddenly occurred to me that she had got on very well without me during the ages. The discovery irritated me. She was not behaving at all as I had expected. This cool, even casual reception certainly was not in keeping with my idea of what it ought to have been. "But Mr. Poopendyke has been awfully kind. He has given me all the news."
Poopendyke! Had he been visiting her without my knowledge or—was I about to say consent?