Among other things, Lady Harden knew when to be silent, and now, having made her speech, she sat watching Cleeve, as, aghast, he dropped his rod until its flexible tip lay on the darkening water, and stared off toward the house.
She had said it, and its effect on him was much what she had expected it to be.
He was so young that his strength, she knew, was largely potential; only she, as far as she knew, had ever observed its potentiality; to others he was a handsome, merry, young animal, “keen on girls,” as he himself called it, and as innocent of any comprehension of the deeper meanings of life as a pleasant poodle pup.
She, being of those who have eyes to see, had, during the three days she had known him, watched him closely, with the result that he interested her.
And now she had said to him this thing that so utterly disconcerted him.
Partly out of kindness she had said it, and partly because it was the quickest way to fix his genial but roving attention where she wished it to be—on herself.
He was so young that her five years of seniority, and the existence of her eleven-year-old son, had, to his mind, separated her from him by something like a generation. He had found her a ripper as to looks, awfully jolly to talk to and no end of a musician.
But he had never thought of her as belonging to his own class in years, and she knew this.
And as she watched him first shrink and then straighten himself under the blow she had given him, she knew that her first move was a success.