One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid
Damaris good-bye. Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or
the young girl's smiling and unruffled acquiescence in her departure
aroused latent alarms. She began to excuse her action in leaving her
charge thus solitary, to protest her devotion; becoming, it may be added,
red and agitated in the process. Her thick, short little fingers worked
nervously on the crook handle of her white cotton umbrella. Her round
light-coloured eyes grew humid to the point of fogging the lenses of her
gold-rimmed glasses.
"But why should you worry so now, just as you are starting, Billy?"
Damaris reasoned, with the rather cruel logic of cool eighteen in face of
hot and flustered nine-and-thirty. "Only at luncheon you were telling me
how much you always enjoy spending an afternoon at the Grey House. I
thought you looked forward so much to going. What has happened to turn
you all different, like this, at the last minute?"
"Nothing has happened exactly; but I have scruples about visiting my
own friends and letting you remain alone when Sir Charles is from home.
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