Ambrose registered that fact and dismissed it in the same instant. And then she smiled a small, private, entirely unrepentant smile, the smile of a person who has just been given a gift she did not expect, and said, I shall see what can be done, sir. She went. She did not curtsy. He noticed that afterwards she kept him 20 minutes. He spent them prowling that hall and being irritated by it, and being unable to stop looking at it.
There were books on the table under the window, not ornamental books, used ones with the corners soft. There was a ledger open in a small clear hand with columns ruled in red ink. There was a great map of the estate pinned to the paneling by the door, with a dozen little annotations in pencil: drainage; hedge to be laid, May 14th. On the mantel stood a china dog of surpassing ugliness. Ambrose was still looking at the china dog when a manservant came and said, Your Grace, I beg your pardon. The mistress will see you in the estate room.
Ambrose Vane walked into the estate room of Renfield House and found the girl who had taken his coat sitting behind the desk. She had not changed her gown. She had not put up her hair or pinned on a brooch or made a single concession to him. She sat behind a broad oak desk with a ledger open in front of her and a pen in her hand. She rose.
Your Grace, she said. I am Tabitha Ren. Renfield is mine. Will you sit down? There was a silence of some length. Ambrose Vane had faced a Commons committee, a duel at nineteen, and his own father. He had never in his life wished so entirely to be somewhere else.
You, he said, took my coat. You held it out to me. You allowed me. He stopped. He was aware with horrible clarity of every word he had said in that hall, and of the tone in which he had said them, and of the fact that this woman had heard all of it, and had gone away with a smile on her face, and had spent 20 minutes doing, he now understood precisely nothing at all, except letting him stand in his own wrongness like a man in the rain.
You allowed me to believe you are a servant. You did not require any allowing, said Tabitha Ren. You did it entirely without assistance. I only declined to interrupt you. She sat down and gestured to the chair opposite and after a moment stiffly he took it.
Do not be too hard on yourself. Your Grace. Nine gentlemen in ten do the same. They arrive. They see a plain woman in a gray gown who is not being idle.
And they conclude. It is a very restful thing to be concluded about. One learns a great deal. You are laughing at me. I am not.