CHAPTER XI
CAPTAIN CLYNE’S PLAN
For a full hundred yards Henrietta walked on with her head in the air, too angry to accost or even to look at her companion; who, on his part, tripped meekly beside her. Then a sense of the absurdity of the position—of his position rather than her own, for she had whirled him off whether he would or no—overcame her. And she laughed.
“Was ever anything so ridiculous?” she cried. And she looked at him askance and something ashamed. The quick movement which had enabled her to escape had loosened the thick mass of her fair hair, and this, with her flushed cheeks and kindled eyes, showed her so handsome that it was well the impetuous justice was no longer with her.
The stranger was apparently less impressionable.
“I am glad,” he said primly, “that my coming was so opportune.”
“Oh! I was not afraid of him,” Henrietta answered, tossing her head.
“No?” he rejoined. “Indeed. Still, I am glad that I came so opportunely.”
He was a neat, trim man in black, of a pale complexion, and with the small features and the sharp nose that indicate at once timidity and obstinacy; the nose that in the case of the late Right Honourable William Pitt, whom he was proud to resemble, meant something more. But for a pair of bright eyes he had been wholly mean, and wholly insignificant; and Henrietta saw nothing in him either formidable or attractive. She had a notion that she had seen him somewhere; but it was a vague notion, and how he came to be here or commissioned to her she could no more conjecture than if he had risen from the ground.
“You are a stranger here?” she said at last, after more than one side-long glance.
“Yes, I descended from the coach an hour ago.”