Apparently each of the pair was equally surprised. Each stared at the other as if tongue-tied; Mr Holland motionless, holding the ring a little in front of him, as if suffering from at least temporary paralysis; Miss Bewicke, equally rigid, with her fingers up to her throat, just as she had raised them intending to remove the boa which was about her neck. It was she who first regained the faculty of speech.
'Guy!' The word came with a little gasp, as if she uttered it unwittingly. He was still; staring at her as if he were powerless to remove his eyes from off her face. 'What are you doing?'
Still silence from the man. His incapacity seemed to inspire her with confidence. She removed her boa, smiling as she did so. She sauntered here and there, eyeing things. She walked right round him, peering at him as she went. He might have been some mechanical figure, he endured so stolidly her ostentatious curiosity. Only he followed her with his glance as she passed round.
She did not speak when she had finished her inspection; with apparent indifference to his presence she took off her hat and coat. Unable, perhaps, to endure the situation any longer he struggled to obtain possession of his voice. It sounded harsh and husky.
'I thought you had gone to Brighton?'
'So you keep an observation on my movements, I see?' The words were accompanied by a smile which made him clench his fists so tightly that he drove the nails into the palms. She was folding up a veil, with a dainty show of peculiar care. 'I ought to be at Brighton; but I'm not. I meant to go; but I didn't. It was so late that I put off my journey till tomorrow; so I went to see some people instead. It was painfully slow; this promises to be better.'
Her airy manner, which seemed to him to be so pregnant with contempt, tried him more than reproaches might have done, or rage. He was so conscious of his position that indifference stung more than lashes. A policeman he could have faced, but not this smiling girl. All his self-respect had gone clean out of him; he felt she knew, and floundered in his efforts to regain some part of it.
'Miss Bewicke, you know why I am here.'
'To see me, I suppose. So good of you, Guy. Especially as I take it that you intended to wait for me till I returned from Brighton.'
'I came to take my own.'