But she noticed
that when the footman brought in tea, and in arranging the cups let a
spoon slip jangling from its saucer, Michael jumped as if a bomb had
gone off, and under his breath said to the man, "You clumsy fool!"
Little as the incident was, she, knowing Michael's courtesy and
politeness, found it significant, as bearing on the evidence of his
tired face. Then, next moment his mother said something to him, and
instantly his love transformed and irradiated it.
To-day, more than ever before, Lady Ashbridge seemed to exist only
through him. As Sylvia knew, she had been for the last few weeks
constantly disagreeable to him; but she wondered whether this exacting,
meticulous affection was not harder to bear. Yet Michael, in spite of
the nervous strain which now showed itself so clearly, seemed to find no
difficulty at all in responding to it. It might have worn his nerves to
tatters, but the tenderness and love of him passed unhampered through
the frayed communications, for it was he himself who was brought into
play. It was of that Michael, now more and more triumphantly revealed,
that Sylvia felt so proud, as if he had been a possession, an
achievement wholly personal to her.
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