She looked up into his laughing face, all the brightness back again in her own.
“I am so sorry, so very sorry,” she said with her soft accent and pretty stress upon the r’s, “so sorry to have troubled you; I thought not of it.”
“By George!” thought the young man, as he let his eyes rest for a moment on the lovely blushing face, “she is frightfully pretty.”
Aloud he only made some little joking speech about his perfect readiness to run all the way to Haverstock in her service if she chose. “For this is the Haverstock Road you were posting along at such a rate,” he explained.
A foolish commonplace little speech, but it made Geneviève blush all the more; she had heard so much of the formality and the stiffness of Englishmen, that she was ready to attach absurdly exaggerated importance to the most ordinary little bit of gallantry, and to treasure up in her memory, as fraught with meaning, idle words forgotten by the speaker as soon as uttered.
“Where then is my cousin?” she said, turning as if to retrace her steps, but Mr. Fawcett stopped her.
“Cicely will meet us across the field,” he said; “there is a stile a few steps further on. You are not going home through the woods again, Miss Casalis, you are coming back to Lingthurst with me to luncheon; my mother ordered me to bring you and Cicely back—she has got a cold or a headache or something, and wants cheering—and so I came to church on purpose to fetch you. Wasn’t it good of me?”
He spoke in his usual half-bantering tone, and Geneviève hardly understood how much was fun, and how much earnest. So she said nothing, but looked up again and smiled; then a thought struck her.
“Did Cicely say I too should go to your—to Miladi Fawcett’s house to luncheon?” she inquired; “might it not be better that I should return to Greystone to tell my aunt?”
“Walk all the way there alone?” exclaimed Mr. Fawcett. “Certainly not. Of course you must come to Lingthurst, too. Cicely sent word home by Mrs. Moore. It will be all right. Cicely often comes back with us on Sundays. And didn’t I tell you, Miss Casalis, that I came to church on purpose?”