"That doesn't matter at all," cried Bennett. "It's the work that matters." And he rushed off into a long tirade which Annette thought very splendid, and Francis punctuated with thin blue puffs of smoke from his pipe.
"On the whole," said Francis, reflectively. "On the whole I think it would be better when I meet your father to say nothing about your relationship with my daughter."
Bennett seemed to be on the point of protesting. Francis hurried on:
"I take it seriously, I assure you. My daughter considers herself engaged to you. She is old enough to know her own mind. On the other hand, I don't think I can give you any official recognition until there is some more immediate prospect of your being able to provide a livelihood for the two of you."
Bennett was embarrassed by all this, and his enthusiasm oozed away and left him blank and expressionless. Fortunately--perhaps deliberately--he had his profile towards Annette, and she found it very beautiful. She had a queer feeling that her father was teasing the young man, and she wanted to defend and help him. His ambition was altogether laudable, and he was in love (so she believed); the two things were interdependent and both must be promoted. Had it been in her power she would have turned Bennett into a clergyman there and then, and handed him over to Gertrude with her blessing.
Gertrude came in just then and shattered Annette's bountiful altruism of desire by saying:
And Annette, who had been inflated by her dreams for Bennett and his fervency, felt at once like Cinderella, and she crept away to the kitchen, taking in her mind the picture of Gertrude embracing her father and Bennett shaking her father's hand.
At once the whole scene became curiously remote, as remote as Minna and Basil Haslam in the drawing-room, as remote as her mother nodding foolishly to the buzz of their whispered conversation, as remote as Deedy Fender and all her old life in Edinburgh and Westmoreland. Real only to her then were the happy days of her childhood in Cornwall, and joyous moments here and there--a wild scamper on Arthur's Seat; a long swim in the Firth of Forth, an affectionate talk with a girl at school, a word of praise from a mistress whom she had adored. Then, like tripping over a stone, she came back to Annie. Annie who was in sore trouble. Annie who wanted only a word from Frederic. . . . She heard Serge's step in the hall, on the stairs, then his big voice saluting Basil Haslam, and then the two of them go upstairs to the studio-bedroom at the top of the house. She heard Gertrude and Bennett come out of the study and go upstairs. They stopped on the landing, and she heard them kiss.