Presently she lifted her face, flushed and tear-stained. She went to the glass and arranged her hair—she had a horror of public emotion. Her aunt would be coming back! She took up a piece of work, and began passing the needle mechanically in and out—it was almost too dark to see.
The door was opened. She expected to hear her aunt’s smoothly offended voice, but the servant announced—
CHAPTER XX
Jocelyn rose from her seat, stretching out her hands, as Nielsen came slowly forward from the door. The two peered at each other in the dusk. The servant, going out, turned up the light, and it leaped suddenly forth from the twisted brackets on the walls upon the man’s square figure, and the girl’s flushed and smiling face.
Nielsen bowed low over her hand with his elaborate courtesy. There was an air of prosperity about him. He was tightly buttoned into a smart, grey overcoat, and wore an orchid in his buttonhole. He carried in his hand a hat of exceptional glossiness, to which a mourning band only succeeded in giving an additional air of festivity. His face was rather fatter, his moustache seemed, if anything, tawnier. His eyeglass was carefully screwed into his eye, and he regarded Jocelyn through it with an expression of admiring benevolence.
“I am verry fortunate! verry fortunate,” he kept repeating, purring his r’s and spitting his t’s. “What a prretty room! How well you are looking!”
Her face was burning, and her eyes dark and soft after the flow of tears.
“I’m very glad to see you again,” she said. “Come and sit down.” She took the hat out of his hand, put it on the table, and turned a chair for him to the fire, talking all the time. In the restless and excited state of her nerves, he was a godsend to her.
“And how is the dear aunt?” he said, with his old pathetic emphasis. Jocelyn began to laugh. She could not help it—she had been waiting for the words. She struggled with her laughter and laughed the more. Nielsen looked at her rather puzzled, and then began to laugh too. He had not the least idea why, except that she looked so charming, with the bright colour in her cheeks, with her brown eyes dancing, and her white teeth showing as she swayed gracefully backwards and forwards in her chair.