Poor Philippa, she would gladly have been left by herself for a few moments, to recover her composure and think over the disagreeable shock she had just received. For the brave front she had put upon it was only in appearance; in reality she was miserably upset.
“You are looking very pale, Miss Raynsworth,” said Mr Gresham. “Are you tired? Pray don’t dance if you would rather sit quietly and rest.”
“No, thank you,” Philippa replied. “I would rather dance,” which, under the circumstances—“sitting out” only meaning a tête-à-tête with her partner—was certainly true. “I am really not tired,” she went on, “though I have been dancing so energetically as to tear my dress, you saw?”
“That was that clumsy Delmaine’s fault,” he replied. “I saw how it happened. I was waiting to catch you as you came back from the cloak-room. It is all right now, I suppose?” with a glance at her skirts. It would have annoyed him to find himself entangled in his partner’s torn flounces before the whole ball-room!
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “I got it mended by one of the maids in the cloak-room.”
The word—or was it an unconscious intuition of what was passing in the girl’s mind?—caught Mr Gresham’s ear.
“Oh, by-the-by,” he said, “I wanted to ask you something. Do give me leave to speak to Mrs Worthing about that insolent maid of hers. I really think she must be insane. I cannot forget about it, and I do not think such a thing should be allowed to pass.”
Philippa smiled—had Mr Gresham been more discriminating, her smile would have struck him as a very bitter one.
“Oh, dear,” she said, “I wonder at your remembering about that absurd thing. Surely it should be treated as beneath contempt.”
Mr Gresham looked dissatisfied.