He stuck it in his waist-coat pocket without examination.
"This is Miss Emsdale, our governess," said Mrs. Smith-Parvis. "She's an English girl, Mr. Moody."
"Glad to meet you," stammered Mr. Moody, desperately.
"How do you do, Mr. Moody," said Jane, in the most matter-of-fact way.
Mr. Moody knew that she was a paid governess. He had known it for many months. But that didn't alter the case. She was the "real thing." He couldn't put on any "side" with her. He couldn't bring himself to it, not if his life depended on it. Not even if she had been a scullery-maid and appeared before him in greasy ginghams. All very well to "stick it on" with these fashionable New Yorkers, but when it came to the daughter of the Earl of Wexham,—well, it didn't matter what she was as long as he knew who she was.
His mask was off.
The change in his manner was so abrupt, so complete, that his august customers could not fail to notice it. Something was wrong with the poor man! Certainly he was not himself. He looked ill,—at any rate, he did not look as well as usual. Heart, that's what it was, flashed through Mrs. Millidew's brain. Mrs. Smith-Parvis took it to be vertigo. Sometimes her husband looked like that when—
"Will you please excuse me, ladies,—just for a moment or two?" he mumbled, in a most extraordinary voice. "I will go at once and write a note to Mr. Juneo. Make yourselves at 'ome. And—and—" He shot an appealing glance at Miss Emsdale,—"and you too, Miss."
In a very few minutes a stenographer came out of the office into which Mr. Moody had disappeared, with a typewritten letter to Mr. Juneo, and the word that Mr. Moody had been taken suddenly ill and begged to be excused. He hoped that they would be so gracious as to allow Mr. Paddock to show them everything they had in stock,—and so on.
"It was so sudden," said Mrs. Millidew. "I never saw such a change in a man in all my life. Heart, of course. High living, you may be sure. It gets them every time."