"Where, dear? Get where? What is it you want to do, Deleah?"
She seemed not to hear: "If I can get there first!" she said to herself; then, going stumblingly, reached the door, and was gone.
The two women left, stared at each other's blank face in the mingled lights of the shop. "She isn't running after Mr. Gibbon, surely!" Mrs. Day said, helplessly perplexed.
"There's no good in her a-doing that. Gibbon's heart's set on Bessie,"
Emily declared.
"Do go after her, and bring her back, Emily."
The great yard of the Hope Brewery was nearly empty. A young clerk, his pen stuck in the bushy hair above his ears, his hands in his trousers pockets, was whistling as he walked across it, stepping lightly from the shadows cast by the huge buildings to the sunshine of the open spaces. An enormous drayman was backing a pair of powerful horses, in order to bring his wagon under that portion of the wall over which a barrel hung suspended; two other men also of gigantic proportions, with red-shining faces and aprons tied over their ample bodies, stood to watch the manoeuvres. A groom in charge of a saddle-horse by the entrance to the main building patted his horse's neck as he also looked on.
Deleah, flinging herself from the door of the four-wheeler which had brought her, dashed through the yard, consciously seeing none of these things, which yet photographed themselves on her brain and remained indelibly printed there till her dying day. She knew her way to the private room of Sir Francis, and made towards it, without pausing to heed the one or two men who endeavoured to stop and question her. In the ante-room to the inner sanctum, a confidential clerk who always sat there flew up from his desk.
"Excuse me, miss. A moment, please. You can't go in there. Sir Francis is particularly engaged."
When she took no notice, he tried to reach the door before her; but Deleah, too quick for him, dashing forward, opened, and shut it in his face.
Sir Francis was standing in his favourite position with his back to the mantelpiece, in riding dress, his gloves and whip in his hand. Deleah, bolting into the room, and falling back upon the door, the more effectually to close it upon the confidential clerk, had an instant's vision of him in his calm unassailableness, in that unruffled perfection of appearance, which, while it had always awakened her girlish admiration, had ever seemed to remove him to an immeasurable distance. The sight of him, even in what was to her a supreme moment, had its habitual effect of pouring cold waters of discouragement upon her mood, of making her doubtful of herself and any claim she could possibly make upon his attention. She had been presumptuous in pushing herself into his presence. Of course he was safe. Of course nothing could hurt him. The poor Honourable Charles, the erstwhile draper's assistant, with his common, thick-set figure, his hoarse voice, his unrefined accent—it was an offence even to think of him in the same breath with this elegant gentleman. How could this one on his high eminence of aloofness and security be endangered by such an one as that?