Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/201

Rh butler prompted and primed must quail, requested him to carry straight up. Then unannounced and unaccompanied, not knowing in the least whom he should find, he had taken, for the hundredth time in four months, his quick course to the drawing-room, where emptiness, as it proved, reigned, but where, notwithstanding, he felt, at the end of an hour, rather more than less in possession. To express it, to put it to her, to put it to any one, would perhaps have been vain and vulgar; but the whole assurance on which he had proceeded was his sense that, on the spot, he had, to a certain point, an effect. He was enough on the spot from the moment she knew he was, and she would know it—know it by divination, as she had often before shown how extraordinarily she knew things—even if that pompous ass had not sent up his note. To what point his effect would prevail in the face of the biggest obstacle he had yet had to deal with was exactly what he had come to find out. It was enough, to begin with, that he did, after a weary wait, draw her—draw her in spite of everything: he felt that as he at last heard her hand on the doorknob. He heard it indeed pause as well as move—pause while he himself kept perfectly still. During this minute, it must be added, he looked straight at the ugliest of the whole mixed row of possibilities. Something had yielded—yes; but what had yielded was quite most probably not her softness. It might well be her hardness. Her hardness was her love of the sight of her own effect.

Dressed for church, though it was now much too late, she was more breathless than he had ever seen her; in spite of which, beginning immediately, he gave her not a moment. 'I make a scandal, your letter tells me—I make it, you say, even before the servants, whom, you appear to have taken in the most extraordinary way into your confidence. You greatly exaggerate—but even suppose I do: let me assure you frankly that I care not one rap. What you've done you've done, and I'm here in spite of your letter—and in spite of