Cuckoo Bright
seemed struck completely dumb by the transformation. She took the chair
he indicated, mechanically put her feet up on the stool he pushed
forward, and with a rather trembling hand accepted a cup of tea.
"Do you take sugar?" Valentine said, bending over her with the
sugar-basin.
"No, no," she said.
"Oh, but I thought you loved sweet things," Julian interposed. "Surely--"
"I won't have none to-day," she ejaculated, adding with an endeavour
after gentility; "thank you, all the same," to Valentine.
He offered her some delicious cakes, but she was apparently petrified by
the grandeur of her surroundings, or by some hidden sensation of shyness
or of shame, and was refusing to eat anything, when Julian came to the
rescue.
"Oh, but you must," he said. "Have some of these sugar-biscuits."
She took some from him and began to sip and munch steadily, but still in
silence. Julian began to fear that the festival must be a dire failure,
for her obvious and extreme constraint affected him, and he was also
seized with an absurd sense of shyness in the presence of Valentine, and,
instead of talking, found himself immersed in a boyish anxiety as to
Valentine's attitude of mind towards the girl.
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