“Her ladyship is not at home.” The butler’s bland voice fell like a douche of cold water on John’s heart.
Now, I don’t know whether John’s face fell in proportion to his heart, and the butler, more human than the majority of butlers, saw the falling, or whether his next statement came in the mere ordinary routine of matters. Anyhow,
“But Miss Delancey is at home, and her ladyship will return shortly,” followed closely on the former speech.
John’s heart leaped to at least ten degrees above the point from which it had fallen. The speech had not even come as a query regarding his desire to enter, it had come as simple statement of fact.
John stepped across the threshold.
CHAPTER XXVIII
ON THE TERRACE
She came to him in the hall.
Underneath her cordial ease of manner was the tiniest hint of shyness, a sort of half-forgotten breath of extreme youngness, I might almost say of childishness. Yet, very assuredly, there was nothing gauche about the reception. The hint merely served to emphasize her youth. If John thought about her age at all, he probably placed her at about twenty-two or thereabouts, which, I take it, was pretty near the mark. But I don’t fancy the thought entered his mind. It was enough for him that there she was, sitting opposite to him in the dusky hall. A ray of sunlight, falling through an open window, caught the burnished copper of her hair, turning it to vivid flame. It looked a thing alive and palpitating, a burning aureole around her face.
And now that the eighth meeting was accomplished, John found himself suddenly tongue-tied, at a loss for any of those suitable little phrases fitting to the occasion. Nothing is so infectious as embarrassment, however slight, more particularly if there be any degree of sympathy between the two. Certainly it proved infectious in this case. Words halted, phrases came disjointedly, disconnectedly.
John cursed himself inwardly for a fool, a procedure which, you may rightly guess, did not vastly aid matters. And then, suddenly, Rosamund got up from her chair.