Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/156

 your father was working in my office, I recall. No one had appreciated him then but myself; I soon became sure he had a great future. That was nineteen years ago, was it? Or twenty?"

"I am twenty-two," Marjorie said; and again was furious.

"It doesn't seem that long ago. Where is your mother? She is in?"

Marjorie led him to the far end of the drawing-room where ordinary tones could not be overheard and where no one could approach them without being seen.

"Mother has gone out," she said. "But she may return soon. Do you want to talk to me while waiting for her, Mr. Stanway?"

She had embarked, with those words, upon her prepared plan, and they sounded rehearsed and forced to her; she sat down, without waiting for him to be seated, and she glanced up at him to see if he was sensitive to the falseness of her tone. It was true that her mother was away from the house, for Marjorie had maneuvered that; it was also true, in the sense that it was possible, that her mother might return; but Marjorie had no idea of permitting him to wait till the time of her probable return. He, however, seemed to suspect nothing. He had dropped his glasses into his pocket and was peering with apparent interest about the big, well-furnished room. He would like to find something showy or in bad taste in this home of his equal, who had been his clerk, Marjorie thought; and she glowed warmly with triumph that he could not so pronounce anything he saw; her mother's taste in furnishing had been restrained and good; and her father, too, liked the really graceful and beautiful more than the merely conspicuous.