The House of Mirth Read Online Free PDF Page B

Gryce should be shy; but she was gifted with treasures of indulgence for such idiosyncrasies, and besides, his timidity might serve her purpose better than too much assurance. She had the art of giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.
    She waited till the train had emerged from the tunnel and was racing between the ragged edges of the northern suburbs. Then, as it lowered its speed near Yonkers, she rose from her seat and drifted slowly down the carriage. As she passed Mr. Gryce, the train gave a lurch, and he was aware of a slender hand gripping the back of his chair. He rose with a start, his ingenuous face looking as though it had been dipped in crimson; even the reddish tint in his beard seemed to deepen.
    The train swayed again, almost flinging Miss Bart into his arms. She steadied herself with a laugh and drew back; but he was enveloped in the scent of her dress, and his shoulder had felt her fugitive touch.
    â€œOh, Mr. Gryce, is it you? I’m so sorry—I was trying to find the porter and get some tea.”
    She held out her hand as the train resumed its level rush, and they stood exchanging a few words in the aisle. Yes—he was going to Bellomont. He had heard she was to be of the party—he blushed again as he admitted it. And was he to be there for a whole week? How delightful!
    But at this point one or two belated passengers from the last station forced their way into the carriage, and Lily had to retreat to her seat.
    â€œThe chair next to mine is empty—do take it,” she said over her shoulder; and Mr. Gryce, with considerable embarrassment, succeeded in effecting an exchange which enabled him to transport himself and his bags to her side.
    â€œAh—and here is the porter, and perhaps we can have some tea.”
    She signalled to that official, and in a moment, with the ease that seemed to attend the fulfillment of all her wishes, a little table had been set up between the seats, and she had helped Mr. Gryce to bestow his encumbering properties beneath it.
    When the tea came, he watched her in silent fascination while her hands flitted above the tray, looking miraculously fine and slender in contrast to the coarse china and lumpy bread. It seemed wonderful to him that any one should perform with such careless ease the difficult task of making tea in public in a lurching train. He would never have dared to order it for himself, lest he should attract the notice of his fellow-passengers; but secure in the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky draught with a delicious sense of exhilaration.
    Lily, with the flavour of Selden’s caravan tea on her lips, had no great fancy to drown it in the railway brew which seemed such nectar to her companion; but rightly judging that one of the charms of tea is the fact of drinking it together, she proceeded to give the last touch to Mr. Gryce’s enjoyment by smiling at him across her lifted cup.
    â€œIs it quite right—I haven’t made it too strong?” she asked solicitously, and he replied with conviction that he had never tasted better tea.
    â€œI daresay it is true,” she reflected; and her imagination was fired by the thought that Mr. Gryce, who might have sounded the depths of the most complex self-indulgence, was perhaps actually taking his first journey alone with a pretty woman.
    It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument of his initiation. Some girls would not have known how to manage him. They would have over-emphasized the novelty of the adventure, trying to make him feel in it the zest of an escapade. But Lily’s methods were more delicate. She remembered that her cousin Jack Stepney had once defined Mr. Gryce as the young man who had promised his mother never to go out in the rain without his overshoes; and acting on this hint, she resolved to impart a gently domestic air to the scene in the hope