So within five minutes of the dreaded entrance into Lady Mary’s drawing-room, Philippa found herself seated most comfortably beside the very man whose presence had been the cause of her nervous misgiving.
No one could have reproached Mr Gresham with “silence.” He exerted himself to the utmost, without seeming to do so in the least; he talked, though not too much; he made the girl forget everything (little as he suspected that there was anything for her to forget) except the present pleasant intercourse. For he believed that all the opportunity he wished to obtain for himself depended upon this first tête-à-tête, and, however he might hereafter judge it expedient to alter or modify his tactics, he had no doubt as to the advisability of his present exertions.
Maida Lermont, from the couch which was quickly provided for her in a corner of the room, started with surprise when she heard her young cousin’s peculiarly pretty and musical laugh ring out, as some half-hour or so later, Philippa, followed by Mr Gresham, made her way back into the drawing-room, and looking round for her special friend, drew forward a low chair to Miss Lermont’s side.
“She used to laugh like that at Dorriford,” thought Maida, “but it is the first time I have heard it here. And it is Mr Gresham who has made her look so bright and happy? Yet she has only seen him once before, and I am sure she was rather nervous about meeting him—I cannot make it out.”
But if—and this possibility she would doubtless, if taxed with it, have indignantly denied—if any shadow of misgiving as to Philippa’s ingenuousness momentarily crossed her mind, it was dispelled the instant the sweet face approached her own, as the girl said, in a somewhat low voice:
“Isn’t it nice! Mr Gresham has given me such good news of them all at home, especially about Duke and Evey; they are going—but no, I must wait to tell you all about it afterwards,” and here Mr Gresham, who had half heard, half guessed the drift of her words, interposed with the gentle considerateness which marked his bearing to the invalid Miss Lermont:
“Shall I get you a cup of tea, or an ice, or whatever you would like best?” he said. “I can easily bring it here—it is all in the next room.”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” Maida replied. “Yes, I should like some tea and a sandwich very much.—And you, Philippa, you have had nothing?”
“I will go and get something for myself when Mr Gresham brings your tea,” said Philippa, and the young man noted her words approvingly. This was not the sort of girl, he thought, to care to have a man—or “the man” would probably have more accurately described his thought—dragging about after her in any conspicuous way. No, there was no doubt of it, she was a type apart. And he smiled to himself, half apologetically, at the idea that, after all his several years’ experience of society, and the caution with which he had steered his way amidst manoeuvring mammas and scarcely less sophisticated daughters, he might be about to fall a victim to the common malady—to find himself, if he did not take care, as genuinely in love as any Henry Hawkins of the people!
But the very candour with which he realised the possibility, showed that so far he had himself well in hand. And well in hand he intended to keep himself. For it would be a complete mistake to suppose that this was in any sense a case of “love at first sight.” Mr Gresham had long vaguely intended to marry, if—a great “if”—he came across the woman who completely satisfied his fastidious taste, and seemed likely to prove the realisation of his ideal. An ideal, not perhaps of the very loftiest, but admirable enough so far as it went. “She” must be endowed with all the orthodox and specially feminine virtues and graces; she must be refined and “unworldly”—to insure, indeed, the last qualification, he was prepared to sacrifice some amount of conventional “style” or “fashion;” that indescribable touch of finish which tells of a certain position in the world of the day. The very words employed to define it, testifying to its variability and intangible characteristics.