He looked at her and she looked at him. Suddenly he grew embarrassed by a sense of his own imprudence, but she was not in the least embarrassed. To hide a too palpable confusion he opened the book she had given him and his eye caught the name “Ethel H. Cass” on the fly leaf.
“Your name’s Ethel,” he said irrelevantly. But he felt bound to say something. “One of my favorite names.” Trivial, perhaps—but he was really afraid of silence just now.
“I am always called Girlie at home.” She spoke with a spice of deliberate enjoyment. After all, this was quite a promising little scene in the comedy.
He was not sure that he liked Girlie so much. She seemed perhaps a shade disappointed that he didn’t, but those deep and dancing eyes with wonderful flecks of light in them somehow told him to look out.
“Where is your home—if I may ask?” He flew off rather nervously at a tangent.
“I live at Laxton.” The sparkle of her eyes was almost wicked.
“Laxton,” he said. For an instant he was let down a bit. Laxton was very suburban London. “Always lived there?” It was by no means a bad imitation of serene indifference.
“Always. My father was a solicitor. He died some years ago.”
“A solicitor.” One of the learned professions—still George Norris would have put him down as something else. Suddenly he laughed, perhaps a shade queerly. “You’d never guess what my father was.”
“I’m quite sure I couldn’t.” Not the eyes alone in the unconscious insolence of their candor, but also the coolly deliberate words held the very genius of provocation. He half understood why those unsportsmanlike women downstairs disliked this Miss Cass so profoundly.