When, however, a summons to the presence of the said employer actually reached her, the bounce born of imaginary conversations, showed a tendency, as is its habit, basely to desert her and soak clean away.  She had promised herself a little scene, full of respectful solicitude, of sympathy discreetly offered and graciously accepted, a drawing together through the workings of mutual anxiety leading on to closer intercourse, her own breast, to put it pictorially, that on which the stricken parent should eventually and gratefully lean.  But in all this she was disappointed, for Sir Charles did not linger over preliminaries.  He came straight and unceremoniously to the point; and that with so cold and lofty a manner that, although flutterings remained, they parted company with all and any emotions even remotely allied to rapture.

Charles Verity stood motionless before the fire-place in the long sitting-room.  He still wore a heavy frieze travelling coat, the fronts of it hanging open.  His shoulders were a trifle humped up and his head bent, as he looked down at the black and buff of the tiger skin at his feet.  When Theresa approached with her jerky consequential little walk—­pinkly self-conscious behind her gold-rimmed glasses—­he glanced at her, revealing a fiercely careworn countenance, but made no movement to shake hands with or otherwise greet her.  This omission she hardly noticed, already growing abject before his magnificence—­for thus did his appearance impress her—­which, while claiming her enthusiastic admiration, enjoined humility rather than the sentimental expansions in which her imaginary conversations had so conspicuously abounded.

“I have seen Dr. McCabe,” he began.  “His report of Damaris’ condition is very far from reassuring.  He tells me her illness presents peculiar symptoms, and is grave out of all proportion to its apparent cause.  This makes me extremely uneasy.  It is impossible to question her at present.  She must be spared all exertion and agitation.  I have not attempted to see her yet.”

He paused, while anger towards her ex-pupil waxed warm in Theresa once again.  For the pause was eloquent, as his voice had been when speaking about his daughter, of a depth of underlying tenderness which filled his hearer with envy.

“I must therefore ask you, Miss Bilson,” he presently went on, “to give me a detailed account of all that took place yesterday.  It is important I should know exactly what occurred.”

Whereat Theresa, perceiving pitfalls alike in statement and in suppression of fact, hesitated and gobbled to the near neighbourhood of positive incoherence, while admitting, and trying to avoid admitting, how inconveniently ignorant of precise details she herself was.