He had, in fact, done this for the satisfying of Pearson, whose respectful unhappiness would otherwise have been manifest despite his efforts to conceal it.He dressed quickly and asked some questions about Strangeways.Otherwise Pearson thought he seemed preoccupied.He only made one slight joke.
"You'd be a first-rate dresser for a quick-change artist, Pearson," he remarked.
On his way to the drawing-room he deflected from the direct path, turning aside for a moment to the picture-gallery because for a reason of his own he wanted to take a look at Miles Hugo.He took a look at Miles Hugo oftener than Miss Alicia knew.
The gallery was dim and gloomy enough, now closing in in the purple-gray twilight.He walked through it without glancing at the pictures until he came to the tall boy in the satin and lace of Charles IIperiod.He paused there only for a short time, but he stood quite near the portrait, and looked hard at the handsome face.
"Gee!" he exclaimed under his breath, "it's queer, gee!"Then he turned suddenly round toward one of the big windows.He turned because he had been startled by a sound, a movement.Some one was standing before the window.For a second's space the figure seemed as though it was almost one with the purple-gray clouds that were its background.It was a tall young woman, and her dress was of a thin material of exactly their color--dark-gray and purple at once.The wearer held her head high and haughtily.She had a beautiful, stormy face, and the slender, black brows were drawn together by a frown.
Tembarom had never seen a girl as handsome and disdainful.He had, indeed, never been looked at as she looked at him when she moved slightly forward.
He knew who it was.It was the Lady Joan girl, and the sudden sight of her momentarily "rattled" him.
"You quite gave me a jolt," he said awkwardly, and knowing that he said it like a "mutt." "I didn't know any one was in the gallery.""What are you doing here?" she asked.She spoke to him as though she were addressing an intruding servant.There was emphasis on the word "you."Her intention was so evident that it increased his feeling of being "rattled." To find himself confronting deliberate ill nature of a superior and finished kind was like being spoken to in a foreign language.
"I--I'm T.Tembarom." he answered, not able to keep himself from staring because she was such a "winner" as to looks.
"T.Tembarom?" she repeated slowly, and her tone made him at once see what a fool he had been to say it.
"I forgot," he half laughed."I ought to have said I'm Temple Barholm.""Oh!" was her sole comment.She actually stood still and looked him up and down.
She knew perfectly well who he was, and she knew perfectly well that no palliative view could possibly be taken by any well-bred person of her bearing toward him.He was her host.She had come, a guest, to his house to eat his bread and salt, and the commonest decency demanded that she should conduct herself with civility.But she cared nothing for the commonest, or the most uncommon, decency.She was thinking of other things.As she had stood before the window she had felt that her soul had never been so black as it was when she turned away from Miles Hugo's portrait--never, never.She wanted to hurt people.Perhaps Nero had felt as she did and was not so hideous as he seemed.
The man's tailor had put him into proper clothes, and his features were respectable enough, but nothing on earth could make him anything but what he so palpably was.She had seen that much across the gallery as she had watched him staring at Miles Hugo.
"I should think," she said, dropping the words slowly again, "that you would often forget that you are Temple Barholm.""You're right there," he answered."I can't nail myself down to it.It seems like a sort of joke."She looked him over again.
"It is a joke," she said.
It was as though she had slapped him in the face, though she said it so quietly.He knew he had received the slap, and that, as it was a woman, he could not slap back.It was a sort of surprise to her that he did not giggle nervously and turn red and shuffle his feet in impotent misery.He kept quite still a moment or so and looked at her, though not as she had looked at him.She wondered if he was so thick-skinned that he did not feel anything at all.
"That's so," he admitted."That's so." Then he actually smiled at her.
"I don't know how to behave myself, you see," he said."You're Lady Joan Fayre, ain't you? I'm mighty glad to see you.Happy to make your acquaintance, Lady Joan."He took her hand and shook it with friendly vigor before she knew what he was going to do.
"I'll bet a dollar dinner's ready," he added, "and Burrill's waiting.
It scares me to death to keep Burrill waiting.He's got no use for me, anyhow.Let's go and pacify him."He did not lead the way or drag her by the arm, as it seemed to her quite probable that he might, as costermongers do on Hampstead Heath.
He knew enough to let her pass first through the door; and when Lady Mallowe looked up to see her enter the drawing-room, he was behind her.To her ladyship's amazement and relief, they came in, so to speak, together.She had been spared the trying moment of assisting at the ceremony of their presentation to each other.