through the darkness, he still felt her enveloped in her menacing blush. What its menace meant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact that Madame Olenska’s name had evoked it.
They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usually followed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom.
“May!” he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight glance of surprise at his tone.
“This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see that it’s kept properly trimmed,” he grumbled nervously.
“I’m so sorry: it shan’t happen again,” she answered, in the firm bright tone she had learned from her mother; and it exasperated Archer to feel that she was already beginning to humour him like a younger Mr. Welland. She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck up on her white shoulders and the clear curves of her face he thought: “How young she is! For what endless years this life will have to go on!”