“Though she looks so young,” thought the elder woman, “she has plenty of self-possession as well as charming manners.”
But inwardly Evelyn had been feeling considerable trepidation, and it was not without some relief that she found herself and the man allotted to her safely on their way to the dining-room. His name her memory had retained, though she was in a state of mystification as to those of most of the others. She glanced up at her cavalier. She was not peculiarly small, but he seemed to tower above her, and had to bend his head to catch some little commonplace remark which she felt it due to herself to volunteer, “for fear,” as she afterwards confessed to Philippa, “he should have thought me shy.”
“Certainly,” was the reply; “quite so,” but that was all, and Evelyn’s little feeler, which she had sent out in hopes of its breaking the ice, had no effect beyond that of making her wish she had left the sentence unsaid.
Seated at table, however, where she found herself, to her alarm, at her host’s left hand, she hazarded a second observation—anything, the silliest speech in the world was better than for her new relations to think her in any sense unequal to the occasion.
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr Gresham, for such was his name; and as he bent slightly towards her, she was struck for the first time by his really remarkable good looks, enhanced by a gentleness of expression which tended to reassure her. She laughed and coloured slightly as she repeated her very commonplace, little observation.
“I was only saying that it feels ever so much colder here than farther south!” she said.
“You’ve come from the south,” he responded, with some appearance of interest. “Have you travelled far to-day?”
“Oh, no, not really very far,” she replied. “After all, one can’t travel very far in England; but any cross-country journey makes you feel as if you had—it wastes so much time, though we fitted in our trains pretty well.”
“Is your husband with you?” her companion rejoined, in reality for the sake of drawing her out, for he knew perfectly well that Duke Headfort was still in India, and likely to be there for some time. For, as the housekeeper had mentioned to Philippa, the elder Mr Gresham was a very frequent visitor at Wyverston, and intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of the Headfort family affairs.
Evelyn started slightly.