‘Miss Grayling!’
‘I do! I do! I do!’
‘After all, it is only natural.’
‘That is how you talk,—as if I were a child, and you were,—oh I don’t know what.—Well, Mr Atherton, I am sorry to be obliged to leave you. I have enjoyed my visit very much. I only hope I have not seemed too intrusive.’
She flounced—‘flounce’ was the only appropriate word!—out of the room before I could stop her. I caught her in the passage.
‘Miss Grayling, I entreat you—’
‘Pray do not entreat me, Mr Atherton.’ Standing still she turned to me. ‘I would rather show myself to the door as I showed myself in, but, if that is impossible, might I ask you not to speak to me between this and the street?’
The hint was broad enough, even for me. I escorted her through the hall without a word,—in perfect silence she shook the dust of my abode from off her feet.
I had made a pretty mess of things. I felt it as I stood on the top of the steps and watched her going,—she was walking off at four miles an hour; I had not even ventured to ask to be allowed to call a hansom.
It was beginning to occur to me that this was a case in which another blow upon the river might be, to say the least of it, advisable—and I was just returning into the house with the intention of putting myself into my flannels, when a cab drew up, and old Lindon got out of it.