“It is a slight,” he persisted. “A little later, and let any dare to show slight to you. They shall be taught better. A slight to you will be a slight to me.”
Maria looked at him timidly, and he bent his head with a fond smile. “I shall want somebody to keep house for me at the bank, you know, Maria.”
She coloured even to tears. Mr. George was proceeding to erase them after his own gallant fashion, when he was summarily brought-to by the entrance of Grace Hastings.
There was certainly no love lost between them. Grace did not like George, George did not like Grace. She took her seat demurely in her mother’s chair of state, with every apparent intention of sitting out his visit. So George cut it short.
“What did he come for?” Grace asked of Maria, when the servant had showed him out.
“He came to call.”
“You appeared to be in very close conversation when I came into the room,” pursued Grace, searching Maria with her keen eyes. “May I ask its purport?”
“Its purport was nothing wrong,” said Maria, her cheeks deepening under the inspection. “You question me, Grace, as if I were a child, and you possessed a right over me.”
“Well,” said Grace equably. “What was he talking of?”
Yielding, timid, sensitive Maria was one of the last to resist this sort of importunity. “We had been talking of the Verralls not including me in the invitation. George said it was a slight.”