“You’ll have to get used to a servant, young lady,” he said laughing, “and a Jap butler at that.”
“I’ll try. Have you found a place?”
He nodded, a little embarrassed thus to admit that he had kept the information from her so long.
“You’ll like it and perhaps you will even get used to the butler.”
She seemed to accept the change as a matter of course, as though it was something she had foreseen for a long while. Her attitude rather surprised him. He had not expected such easy compliance. Inga as the head of the house was a new idea to him, something that amused and perplexed him.
Once the installation completed she seemed to enter into the new atmosphere quite naturally. It is true that she became more reticent than ever, seldom joining in the general conversation except when addressed, but in the company of others—and their rooms were seldom quiet now—she held herself with grace and dignity. If she offered no advances she showed no antagonism. The men who came to his dinners admired her tremendously though their wives were plainly puzzled by her, never quite at ease in her presence. Of all the new acquaintances perhaps only one, De Gollyer, suspected the truth, that she was absolutely out of her element, quite at loss how to reconstruct her days.
In the middle of the second month she said to Dangerfield quite suddenly one day:
“Would you mind if I did something?”
“What?” he asked wondering.