Behind John was a lady waiting to meet me.
"—So glad you've come," I said to him; and the words sounded curiously to me because in my excitement I also had spoken in my "company voice."
But I had no time to say another word to him, as I turned to greet Mrs. Marshall.
He mumbled something, flushing, while his eyes devoured my beauty in one dumb, worshipping look. Then he dropped quickly out of our group. I was sorry, but he'll understand that I was flurried. He ought to learn self-control, though; he shouldn't look at me before so many people with all his heart in his eyes.
And I was so vexed about his clothes, too! His old, long, black coat, such as lawyers wear in the West, would have been pretty nearly right—something like what the other men wore—but he seemed to think it was not good enough, and had put on a brand new business suit. Of course there wasn't another man there so clad, but he never seemed to notice how absurd he was.
The Viewing of the Pack didn't last long. Before my cheeks had ceased flaming, before I had grown used to standing there to be looked at, people seemed to go, all at once, as suddenly as they had arrived.
Just as the last ones were leaving, some instinct told me that Mr. Hynes had come. Before I saw him, I felt his gaze upon me, a wondering, glad look, as if I were Eve, the first and only woman.
Milly brought him to me and left us together, but at first he was almost curt in his effort to hide his sensibility to my beauty—as if that were a weakness!—and I was furiously shy, and felt somehow that I must hold him at still greater distance.
"Am I never again to hear you sing?" he asked. "Sweet sounds that have given a new definition to music are still vibrating in my memory."
I knew he was thinking of Christmas!