The girls, it seemed, were a dashing and exclusive group whose number, and conduct, had earned for them the sobriquet of “The Naughty Nine”. They were the envy of all those who stood without the golden circle drawn round them, and subsequently, by dint of heroic pressure that was brought to bear, their number was increased by three and they became “The Dirty Dozen”. The youths were the scions of Ottawa’s aristocracy.
“You don’t care for them?” asked Sullivan. “You wouldn’t like Althea to behave in that way?”
The bare suggestion produced physical pain. “But, she wouldn’t,” cried Marjorie. “She couldn’t, Mr. Sullivan! Not that they aren’t very—er—bright,” she added, seeking to say the kindly thing.
When they returned to the room, the girls were dressed in Mr. Barrington’s clothing—business suits, riding breeks, pyjamas and underwear, while the boys had costumed themselves in their hostess’s attire.
Marjorie kept telling herself that she was dreaming.
She longed to go home. She could neither enter into the revelry nor did she wish to separate herself from the crowd and stay alone with Sullivan. She had been very uncomfortable with him, lately. Sometimes, almost afraid. She refused to acknowledge this fear, even to herself, but she knew that it existed.
The conversation in the Gallery recurred to her with disturbing vividness—not that slander ever influenced her judgment—ever! The person who was swayed by unkind criticism was, in her opinion, no better than the person who uttered it. At the same time, there was something about the Hon. Member for Morroway from which she instinctively shrank, without suspecting that she was making, by her attitude, a confession of her secret impression of the man.
No amount of reasoning could correct this state of affairs. In vain did she tell herself that he was old enough to be her father, and that his frank affection for them all was merely the enthusiastic expression of a lonely man’s dependence upon a kindly household. In vain did she try to overcome a sensation of shame and personal impurity after she had been alone with him.
“My own mind must be evil,” she scourged herself, time and again. “He never has done or said a thing that Raymond couldn’t know. What does make me feel so wicked when I’m alone with him?”
It may have been a sense of impotence that frightened her. She could never see the wheels of Mr. Sullivan’s mind in operation, she could never tell what he was going to do. He seemed to arrive at a goal magically, without progressing step by step, and he had such an uncanny way of divining what she was thinking.