When Uncle came home, he found me reading an interview with him which contained the momentous information that he would say nothing.
"We shall not again forget," he said with a deep sigh of relief, "that
—the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Ilion
—was Helen's. But the Metropolitan still stands. An argument not used on heart-hardened Pharaoh was a plague of press representatives."
I'm afraid he'd had a trying day.
The worst of my day was still to come.
After dinner, when I happened to be alone a minute in the library, Mr. Hynes came in. Oddly enough I'd been thinking about him. I had determined that the next time he called I would for once be self-possessed; I would act as if I had not seen how oddly he conducts himself—now gazing at me as if he would travel round the earth to feast his eyes upon my beauty and now actually shunning Milly's cousin. I was quite resolved to begin afresh and treat him just as cordially as I would any other man:
But the moment he appeared away flew all my wits.
"I think Milly'll be here in a minute," I stammered, and then I stopped, tongue-tied and blushing.
He came towards me, saying abruptly: "May I tell you what I thought when I saw you above us—" I didn't need to ask when or where. "—I thought: The Queen has come to her coronation."