"It is of no consequence, I will write," he said, and departed with a sense of escape.
"Well!" Bessie breathed, as the door closed on the visitor. "Wasn't that extraordinary! What on earth—?"
Her feelings would not allow her to finish the sentence. She looked the rest at Reggie, eyes and mouth open, the fluster into which the visit had thrown her still visibly palpitating in all her person.
"Oh, the dear old boy came to look after me," Reggie explained, calmly indifferent. "I shall get it hot now."
"But why?"
"He won't like my being at home here, like this, you know," the ingenuous youth admitted.
"But, Reggie, you're your own master, aren't you?"
Reggie said he jolly well was, and leaned his head out of the window, to look for Deleah again. He knew very well why she was so long in coming, she had gone ever so far out of her way in order to escape from his attendance on her. It was not very flattering to his amour propre, but it piqued him, in his indolent, spoilt habit. Bessie would have run into his arms, he knew right well, not away from them, and so would three or four other pretty girls be knew. But he did not want Bessie or the others. It was Deleah he wanted. And—Bessie was right there—he was his own master.
Sir Francis as he walked away was making plans to frustrate those resolves for his own management of his affairs which Reggie was making in the window overhead. He had turned aside quite easily the young man's foolish bent in this direction, once before. It might be more difficult now, but he would spare no effort to do it effectually again. He was not favourably impressed by the young woman he had just left; her plump prettiness had not appealed to him; nor the mauve-coloured ribbons streaming down her back. As for her family history it was not only undesirable, it was disreputable.
So, walking with his usually composed mien through the streets of his native town, perhaps its best known and most imposing figure, but in a ruffled and indignant frame of mind, he forgot all about Deleah Day and his errand to her until he saw her come, hurrying along the pavement in his direction.