The butler wavered.
Then, as if to settle all such small difficulties, Henry himself appeared behind him, smiling naively, eagerly.
Cicely hurried forward. Her quick smile came, and the little bob of her head.
'How do you do?' she said brightly. 'Mr Calverly—my aunt, Madame Watt! And my uncle, Senator Watt!'
Madame Watt arose, deliberately, not without a solid sort of majesty. She was a presence; no other such ever appeared in Sunbury. She fixed an uncompromising gaze on Henry.
So uncompromising was it that Cicely covered her embarrassment by moving hurriedly toward the drawingroom, with a quick:—
'Come right in here.'
There was no one living on this erratic earth who could have cowed Henry on this Saturday evening. A week later, yes. But not to-night. He never even suspected that Madame meant to cow him. In such moments as these (and there were a good many of them in his life) Henry was incapable of perceiving hostility toward himself. The disaster that on Tuesday had seemed the end of the world was to-night a hazy memory of another epoch. There were few grown or half-grown persons in Sunbury that were not thinking on this evening of the meanest scandal in the known history of the town and, incidentally, among others involved, of Henry Calverly; but Henry himself was of those few.
He marched straight on Madame with cordial smile and outstretched hand. He wrung the hand of the impassive Senator.
That worthy said, now:—