She archly expressed relief, the light of humor in her eye. He was enchanted by the look of her and yet he was a little anxious too. At the back of his mind there was a subtle feeling that “he was having his leg pulled.” The feeling had always been there, even from the first moment he had talked with her. Somehow she was immensely mature for her years. She appeared to have so much in hand. And a word here and there, an odd phrase, a chance inflection of voice, even her way of looking at people and her manner of entering a room were continually giving her away.
Besides, he had seen from the first that the other ladies of the household had regarded her as a natural enemy. Perhaps it was the sense of their injustice that had first drawn him to her. But from day to day he had increasingly admired the bold and implacable skill with which she had carried the war into the country of her foes. She mightn’t have one shilling to rub against another, this mysterious little lady, but she had rare courage, great will power and infinite resources of her own.
All the same, sitting delightfully close to her on a seat of the deserted Down platform and the great deed done, even at this exquisite moment he was not absolutely sure that she was not laughing at him. And in spite of the elation within this feeling grew upon him as they talked. Somehow, he was less certain of the prize he had won than a victorious suitor should have been. And he had not to look far for reasons.
The 2:10 Up was duly signalled, a full twenty minutes late. Presently it drew up with a prodigious rattle at the platform opposite.
“I suppose you are going up by the next,” said George. “But it’s not so good as this one, you know. It doesn’t start till something past five and it won’t get there until a good bit past one in the morning. I know, because I’ve traveled by it for my sins.”
Ethel—already he had permission to call her Ethel because somehow Girlie didn’t suit her at all!—rejoined that no matter what her sins might be it was not necessary for her to travel to town by the 5:40.
“What, you are staying the night here in Clavering!” His tone was a complex not unpleasing of hope, fear, surprise, bewilderment.
“Ye-es, in the neighborhood, I think, unless I suddenly change my plans.”
“With your mother’s friends, the Lancelots, I suppose?” He couldn’t help laughing as he recalled the audaciously comic turn she had given to the topic of the Lancelots at the family luncheon.
“I’m sure they’ll put me up for a night if I ask them,” she said demurely.