My lord at the window turned on his heel abruptly, as though he had just become aware of the presence of a third person in the room. He was a man of poise, of genial aplomb, one of those complacent gods who are never out of countenance or at loss for a trick of the tongue.
The girl’s eyes seemed to sweep from one to the other with a momentary gleam of distrust. She still wore her mourning, a gown of plain black velvet with a circle of lace at the throat. The expression on her face was one of tired nonchalance. But for that evanescent gleam of the eyes she might have passed as a bloodless and languid girl whose vitality lacked the stimulus of perfect health.
My lord met her with a bow that expressed unnecessary condescension. He had reached an age when it is possible to be fatherly, and even officious in a frank, twinkling, stately fashion.
“And how is my Proserpine? Still in the pensive droops? And yet Mr. Herrick preaches the gathering of roses!”
He put forward a chair for her with the tolerance of an amiable gentleman of the world. She took it without thanking him, her cold, colorless face masking an instinctive repulsion, an impatience that his urbanity seemed fated to inspire.
The lord and the lady exchanged glances. It was as though the girl had brought a frost with her into the midst of June. Her silence and her almost sullen apathy embarrassed them. It was like being in the presence of a statue that had eyes and ears but no tongue.
Anne Purcell clapped her book to, and jerked it aside on to an oak table.
“Where did you drive—in the park?”
“Drive?”
“Good lack! girl, are you torpid? I could swear you have not noticed the color of a gown or the set of a hat. One might as well send out a mummy.”