“Then I will not trouble you further,” said Mr. Verinder stiffly.
“Emmeline,” he said that afternoon, or on an afternoon very near to it, “come in here, please, I want to speak to you.”
Mrs. Verinder had given him a warning; he was flushed, angry, uncomfortable, as he stood at the dining-room door and waited for his daughter. He spoke sternly now, as she appeared at the bottom of the staircase.
“Father, I am going out.”
“Going out as late as this? Why, it’s nearly seven o’clock. And where’s your maid? Where’s that girl—where’s Louisa?”
“I don’t require her. I’m not going far.”
“No, so I think.” He made her come into the dining-room, and he closed the door behind her.
She was wearing a queer little fashionable hat made of chip straw, with rosebud ornaments, and a white spotted veil neatly drawn under her chin; her dark simple dress was of the kind then known as “tailor-made,” fitting close to the waist, but enormously wide at the shoulders; as she stood looking at her father and quivering in anxiety, she had that gentle inoffensive charm of feminine prettiness which du Maurier was at the moment drawing so cleverly.
“Father, I beg you not to detain me. I have an appointment.”