That was what people would discern in him hereafter—a complete and self-sufficient personality. He would no longer be pointed out and classified as somebody’s grandson—somebody’s cousin or grand-nephew. The world would recognize him as being himself. He felt assured, for example, upon reflection that Lady Cressage would not dream of questioning the fashion of the clothes in which he came to see her. She would perceive at once that he had developed beyond the silly pupilary stage of subordination to his coat and hat. She was so clever and sympathetic a woman, he felt intuitively, that these symbols of his emancipated condition would delight her. It was true, he saw again from the mirror that his collar might be a little whiter; his cuffs, too, had lost their earlier glow of starched freshness. But these were trifles to serious minds. And besides, was it not all in the family?
There was a momentary block at the corner of Parliament Street, and here a newsboy thrust a fourth edition upon Christian with such an effect of authority that he found a penny and took the paper. It was the “Westminster Gazette,” and when he had looked upon the second page for a possible drawing by Gould, and had skimmed the column of desultory gossip on the last page, which always seemed to his alien conceptions of journalism to be the kind of matter he liked in a newspaper, he laid the sheet on his knee, and resumed his idle reverie. To his great surprise the cabman’s shouts through the roof were necessary to awaken him at Ashley Gardens. He shook himself, laughingly explained that he had been up all night as he paid his fare, and ascended the steps of 27A, paper in hand.
The servant seemed prepared for his coming, for upon giving his name in response to her somewhat meaning inquiry, she led him in at once. He sat waiting for a few moments in a small and conveniently appointed drawing-room, and then stood up, at the rustle of rapid skirts which announced Lady Cressage in the half-open doorway.
She entered with outstretched hand, and a radiant welcome upon her face.
Christian noted that beyond the hand there was a forearm, shapely and cream-hued, disclosed by the lace of her flowing sleeve. There were billows of this lace, and of some fragile, light fabric which seemed sister to it, enveloping the lady, yet her tall, graceful figure was in some indefinable way molded to the eye beneath them all. The pale hair was as he had first seen it, loosely drawn across her temples; there were warm shadows in it which he had not thought to see. The face, too, had some unexpected phase, here in the subdued light of the curtained room. There was a sense of rosiness in the rounded flesh, a certain reposeful elation in the regard of the blue eyes, which put quite at fault the image of harrowed restlessness and nerves he had retained from Caermere. It was in an illuminating second that he saw all this, and perceived that she was very beautiful, and flushed with the deep consciousness that she read his thoughts like big print.
“It was the greatest cheek in the world—my summoning you like this,” she said, as they shook hands. “Yes—sit here. Put your hat and paper on the sofa. This is my only reception room—but we might have a little more light.”
She moved to the window, to pull back the curtains, and then about the room, lightly rearranging some of the chairs and trinkets—all with a buoyant daintiness of motion which inexpressibly charmed him. “These are not my things, you know,” she explained over her shoulder. “I am not trying in the least to live up to them, either. I take the place, furnished, for three months, from the widow of an Indian officer. You would think she would have some Indian things—but it might have all come direct from Tottenham Court Road. It’s impossible to get the slightest sensation of being at home, here. One could really extract more domesticity out of four bare cottage walls. Or no, what am I saying?”—she had returned, and sinking into the low chair opposite him, pointed her words with a frank smile into his face—-“it is a bit like home—to see you here!”
“I am very glad to be here,” he assured her, nodding his unfeigned pleasure. “But it seemed as if you would never tell me I might come.”
“Oh, I was worried to death. There were all sorts of things to see about when I first came up,” she explained with animation. “And I had the feeling that I didn’t want you to come till I had smoothed some of my wrinkles out, and had achieved a certain control over my nerves. It was not fair to myself—the view you had of me at Caermere.”
The view of her that was afforded him here brought a glow of admiration to his eyes.