"Oh, I didn't understand. If that's it, I'll wait till he turns up. You'll soon get rid of him."
Sylvia had no valid reason to urge against this decision, but she did not desire Robert's company, and chose a feminine method of resenting it.
"I don't think Mr. Trenholme will be anxious to meet you," she said coolly.
"Why not?"
"You are such a transparent person in your likes and dislikes. You have never even seen him, in the ordinary sense of the word, yet you speak of him in a way so unwarranted, so ridiculously untrue, that your manner might annoy him."
"My manner, indeed! Is he so precious then? By gad, it'll be interesting to look this rare bird over."
She turned her back on him and leaned on the wall again. Her slight, lissome figure acquired a new elegance from her black dress. Robert had never set eyes on Sylvia in such a costume before that day. Hitherto she had been a schoolgirl, a flapper, a straight-limbed, boyish young person in long frocks; but today she seemed to have put on a new air of womanliness, and he found it strangely attractive.
"There's no sense in our quarreling about the chap anyhow," he said with a gruff attempt to smooth away difficulties. "Of course, I sh'an't let on I followed you. Just spotted you in the distance and joined you by chance, don't you know."
Sylvia did not answer. She was comparing Robert Fenley's conversational style with John Trenholme's, and the comparison was unflattering to Robert.
So he, too, came and leaned on the wall.