her work-basket, and
began to stitch at it, seating herself near the open window. She was not
without a slight, half-amused sense of lying in ambush, as if some
Biblical voice were saying to her, "Up! for the Lord hath delivered
thine enemy into thine hand."

* * * * *

"My father isn't well," she explained to Davenant, when she had shaken
hands with him and begged him to sit down. "I dare say he may not be
able to go out for two or three days to come."

"So they told me at his office. I was sorry to hear it."

"You've been to his office, then? He told me you were there yesterday.
That's partly the reason why I've ventured to ask you to come in."

She went on with her stitching, turning the canvas first on one side and
then on the other, sticking the needle in with very precise care. He
fancied she was waiting for him to "give himself away" by saying
something, no matter what. Having, however, a talent for silence without
embarrassment, he made use of it, knowing that by means of it he could
force her to resume.

He was not at ease; he was not without misgiving. It had been far from
his expectation to see her on this errand, or, for the matter of that,
on any errand at all. It had never occurred to him that Guion could
speak to her of a transaction so private, so secret, as that proposed
between them. Since, then, his partner in the undertaking had been
foolish, Davenant felt the necessity on his side of being doubly
discreet. Moreover, he was intuitive enough to feel her antipathy toward
him on purely general grounds. "I'm not her sort," was the summing-up of
her sentiments he made for himself. He could not wholly see why he
excited her dislike since, beyond a moment of idiotic presumption long
ago, he had never done her any harm.

He fancied that his personal appearance, as much as anything, was
displeasing to her fastidiousness. He was so big, so awkward; his hands
and feet were so clumsy. A little more and he would have been ungainly;
perhaps she considered him ungainly as it was. He had tried to negative
his defects by spending a great deal of money on his clothes and being
as particular as a girl about his nails; but he felt that with all his
efforts he was but a bumpkin compared with certain other men--Rodney
Temple, for example--who never took any pains at all. Looking at her
now, her pure, exquisite profile bent over her piece of work, while the
sun struck coppery gleams