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You may not believe it, but Crossley is a gentleman." She walked on in silence. "I did not expect your failure to come so soon or in quite that way," he went on. "I got Mrs. Brindley to exact a promise from you that you'd let her know about yourself. I called on Mrs. Belloc one day when you were out, and gave her my confidence and got hers and assured myself that you were in good hands.
Had he not won eighteenpence halfpenny, and was he not securely at peace with his wife? "I don't bet fivers," said the cautious Brindley. "But I'll bet you half-a-crown." "Done!" said Edward Henry. "When will you go?" "Either to-day or to-morrow. I must go to the Majestic first, because I've ordered a room and so on."
In her eyes there was a gleam that more than suggested a possibility of some man some man she might fancy seeing an amazingly different Cyrilla Brindley. "I may say I was daft about pretty women," continued Baird. "I never read an item about a pretty woman in the papers, or saw a picture of a pretty woman that I didn't wish I knew her well. Can you imagine that?" laughed he.
Mildred, her hair done close to her head, a dressing-robe over her nightgown and her bare feet in little slippers, came down the hall. She coiled herself up in a big chair in the library and lit a cigarette. She looked like a handsome young boy. "He told you?" she said to Mrs. Brindley. "Yes," replied Cyrilla. Silence.
Brindley well bred and well educated knew all the little matters which Mildred had been taught to regard as the whole of a lady's education. But Mildred saw that these trifles were but a trifling incident in Mrs. Brindley's knowledge.
Several of the party sat, hair on end, with staring eyes, too tired to shut them. "Food?" "Nema Nishta," was the response. "Can we boil water?" "No." "Where can we boil it?" "Nowhere." "But there is a fire in the kitchen," we said, pointing to a hooded fireplace where a few sticks were burning. "Why shouldn't they boil water?" said a kindly looking man. Miss Brindley made tea.
I was just going to become vocal in its praise, when Mr Brindley said 'That thing under it is a photograph of a drinking-cup for which one of our pupils won a national scholarship last year! Mr Aked appeared in the distance. 'I fancy the old boy wants to be off to bed, Mr Brindley whispered kindly. So we left the Wedgwood Institution. I began to talk to Mr Brindley about music.
"At any rate, we all agree that you have shown that you have a voice." She said this so simply and heartily that Mildred could not but be mollified. Mrs. Brindley changed the subject to the song Mildred had sung, and Mildred stopped puzzling over the mystery of what she had meant by her apparently enthusiastic words, which had yet diffused a chill atmosphere of doubt.
To such an extent that he began to think: "Is she going to spoil my trip for me?" Then Brindley came up. Brindley, too, was going to London. And Nellie's saccharine assurances to Brindley that Edward Henry really needed a change just about completed Edward Henry's desperation.
She examined herself in the glass, and saw or fancied that her looks were going not so that others would note it, but in the subtle ways that give the first alarm to a woman who has beauty worth taking care of and thinks about it intelligently. She thought Mrs. Brindley was beginning to doubt her, suspected a covert uneasiness in Stanley.
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