"Don't you know what an athlete he is—or was?"
"Another perfection? Heavens!—how does he endure it?" said the girl, laughing.
Mrs. France took her leave. She was a very motherly tender-hearted woman, and she would like to have taken her old friend's grandchild in her arms and kissed her. But she wisely refrained; and indeed the instinct to shake her was perhaps equally strong. "How long will she stand gossiping on the doormat with the paragon," said Delia savagely to herself, when she was left alone. "Oh, how I hate a 'charming man'!" She moved stormily to and fro, listening to the distant sounds of talk in the hall, and resenting them. Then suddenly she paused opposite one of the large mirrors in the room. A coil of hair had loosened itself; she put it right; and still stood motionless, interrogating herself in a proud concentration.
"Well?—I am quite ready for him."
But her heart beat uncomfortably fast as the door opened, and Mark
Winnington entered.
Chapter V
As Winnington advanced with outstretched hand to greet her, Delia was conscious of a striking physical presence, and of an eye fixed upon her at once kind and penetrating.
"How are you? You've been through a terrible time! Are you at all rested? I'm afraid it has been a long, long strain."
He held her hand in both his, asking gentle questions about her father's illness, interrogating her looks the while with a frank concern and sympathy.
Delia was taken by surprise. For the first time that day she was reminded of what was really, the truth. She was tired—morally and physically. But Gertrude Marvell never recognised anything of the kind; and in her presence Delia rarely confessed any such weakness even to herself.