They had satisfied Angela with their admiration, and as they came in the three standing men advanced to meet them, and the woman turned her head. Ruth looked at her, and her brain working by a sort of double process, she had time to compare her with the maid’s description, even while her heart was standing still because of the imminent meeting of Gloria and Professor Pendragon. Miss Gilchrist did have short hair, not a fluffy mass like Dorothy Winslow’s, but lank, dank, soiled-brown locks that framed a lank, soiled-brown countenance. Her gown also seemed to be of a dusty black, and Ruth could easily imagine that if her manners were no more attractive than her appearance, she would be quite as disagreeable as the maid described her. A closer view showed an out-thrust foot in a long, flat, soiled-brown shoe, and Ruth remembered what Dorothy had once told her:
“Never trust a woman who wears common sense shoes—there is something radically wrong with her.”
She was being introduced to Mr. Peyton-Russell now. She had never met him before. He was a large man who looked as if he took his material wealth very seriously indeed and thought he owed some reparation to the public from which he had extracted it, but he had a heavy cordiality that was rather charming because it was so obviously sincere.
“And now you must meet the others,” chirped Angela.
Ruth realized for the first time that Angela was like a yellow canary. The birds, singing gaily in the sunshine, made the comparison almost compulsory.
“You’ll have to come to them, and anyway, I always have cocktails in front of the fireplace. After that lone, cold ride, you must need one, though it is only ten o’clock in the morning.”
They followed her across the long room, Ruth walking a step behind Gloria, watching her face, waiting for the moment when she should see around the high-backed chair. They must have seen him at the same moment, for Ruth’s heart gave a little thump and it seemed that Gloria missed a step, her body swaying just perceptibly for a second, while one hand flew to her throat in a gesture that Ruth had seen before. Her colour did not change, but with the sophistication of four months in New York Ruth knew that Gloria’s colour did not “come and go” for very good reason. The biggest change was in her eyes. They seemed to have turned a dark violet and to have opened wider than Ruth had ever seen them before, in a fixed stare. They were standing before him now. In her anxiety about Gloria she had not thought of him at all. His face was quite white and he seemed to be nerving himself for some tremendous ordeal.
“Pardon me for not rising,”—he indicated the crutches beside his chair.
“Professor Pendragon’s not a bit like a real invalid—one forgets it the moment one talks to him,” apologized Angela, rather tactlessly. “He and John are such good friends that I used to be jealous of him, and when I heard he was ill I insisted that John make him come, and do you know, he wanted to run away before, but I told him what clever people were coming and made him stay—aren’t you glad now that you’ve met Gloria Mayfield, and Ruth?”
“Miss Ruth Mayfield and I have met before,” he said.