Muriel, who had neither success nor love, nor any great emotion, moved forward slowly, a small grey figure beneath the dripping trees.
Delia opened the door for her.
"Did you get wet? You must be washed away." She was a new creature, thought Muriel, gentler, saner, with an indefinable bloom of happiness that lent to her real charm. "If I had known that you were going to walk, I should have told that idle creature Godfrey Neale to call for you with his car."
"Father does not like us to use our car when it's wet. I did not know that Godfrey Neale was coming." She had not met him since that dance in Kingsport when the girl had laughed. She did not want to meet him now, when she had intended to forget everything except her sympathy with Delia's happiness.
They entered the comfortable, book-lined room, splashed with liquid firelight. The chairs and tables and people seemed to float as in a fiery sea. She could see nothing clearly until Delia followed her with a lamp.
"Father, Martin, Miss Hammond. Muriel, this is Martin. Godfrey Neale you know."
The room seemed to be full of books, tea-cups, and men. Mr. Vaughan smiled blandly through his spectacles. Godfrey rose and bowed beautifully. Then Muriel found herself shaking hands with Martin Elliott.
He was not at all as she had expected him to be, ironic, lean and scholarly. She stared openly at the short, stocky man, dressed like the shabbier kind of farmer, and smiling at her from a broad humorous face. His untidy hair stood up on end, his tie was crooked, giving a curious effect below his unexpectedly pugnacious mouth and chin, so that he always looked as though he had just emerged from a street row, which indeed, more frequently than most people, he had. Altogether the effect of him was so surprising that Muriel forgot her manners.
He bore her scrutiny for a moment. Then he turned to Delia.
"Delia, she doesn't like me. She doesn't like me a bit."