There is a step
here; will you take my arm?"
She re-entered the house in embarrassed silence;
his unexpected sensitiveness had completely disconcerted her.
Directly he opened the door of the great reception
room she realized that something unusual
had happened in her absence. Most of the gentlemen
looked both angry and uncomfortable;
the ladies, with hot cheeks and carefully feigned
unconsciousness, were all collected at one end of
the room; the host was fingering his eye-glasses
with suppressed but unmistakable fury, and a little
group of tourists stood in a corner casting amused
glances at the further end of the room. Evidently
something was going on there which appeared to
them in the light of a joke, and to most
of the guests in that of an insult. Signora Grassini
alone did not appear to have noticed anything;
she was fluttering her fan coquettishly
and chattering to the secretary of the Dutch
embassy, who listened with a broad grin on his
face.
Gemma paused an instant in the doorway, turning
to see if the Gadfly, too, had noticed the disturbed
appearance of the company.
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