Young Mrs. Millidew was standing at the top of the steps, evidently waiting for him. Her brow wrinkled as she took him in from head to foot. He was wearing spats. His two-button serge coat looked as though it had been made for him,—and his correctly pressed trousers as well. He stood for a moment, his head erect, his heels a little apart, his stick under his arm, while he drew on,—with no inconsiderable effect—a pair of light tan gloves. And the smile with which he favoured her was certainly not that of a punctilious menial. On the contrary, it was the rather bland, casual smile of one who is very well satisfied with his position.
In a cheery, off-hand manner he inquired if she was by any chance going in his direction.
The metamorphosis was complete. The instant he stepped outside of Mrs. Millidew's door, the mask was cast aside. He stood now before the world,—and before the puzzled young widow in particular,—as a thoroughbred, cocksure English gentleman. In a moment his whole being seemed to have undergone a change. He carried himself differently; his voice and the manner in which he used it struck her at once as remarkably altered; more than anything else, was she impressed by the calm assurance of his inquiry.
She was nonplussed. For a moment she hesitated between resentment and the swift-growing conviction that he was an equal.
For the first time within the range of her memory, she felt herself completely rattled and uncertain of herself. She blushed like a fool,—as she afterwards confessed,—and stammered confusedly:
"I—yes—that is, I am going home."
"Come along, then," he said coolly, and she actually gasped.
To her own amazement, she took her place beside him and descended the steps, her cheeks crimson. At the bottom, she cast a wild, anxious look up and down the street, and then over her shoulder at the second-story windows of the house they had just left.
Queer little shivers were running all over her. She couldn't account for them,—any more than she could account for the astonishing performance to which she was now committed: that of walking jauntily through a fashionable cross-town street in the friendliest, most intimate manner with her mother-in-law's discharged chauffeur! Fifth Avenue but a few steps away, with all its mid-morning activities to be encountered! What on earth possessed her! "Come along, then," he had said with all the calmness of an old and privileged acquaintance! And obediently she had "come along"!
His chin was up, his eyes were sparkling; his body was bent forward slightly at the waist to co-ordinate with the somewhat pronounced action of his legs; his hat was slightly tilted and placed well back on his head; his gay little walking-stick described graceful revolutions.