I kept my head up and my voice quite steady as I replied: “Oh, certainly!” And I rose, taking up the green-garlanded cup with the small gilt apostle-spoon in the saucer, and left the drawing-room to face my first official _tête-à-tête_ with the Governor. Ever since he’s been the unconscious cause of my having had to give up the chance of a serene and happy future with the man who really cares for me, I’ve looked upon my employer with a mixture of resentment and dread. As I say, the dread’s melted rapidly. But the resentment’s growing! “_I’ll_ make him pay, somehow,” thought I revengefully, “for all this!” By “all this” I meant not only for the loss of Sydney, and the castle at Ballycool, and comfort and position, but for making me look and feel so acutely foolish before Mrs. Waters. “I’ll see if I can’t make him rather uncomfortable over it himself,” I determined. I crossed the hall, forcing myself to feel as if I were back in the office, where we typists took it in turn to carry Mr. Dundonald’s cup of afternoon tea into the inner sanctum, where he glowered over his figures. (How cross he was if one of us shook the cup so that some of the tea slopped over and soaked the lump of sugar and the biscuit laid in the saucer.) Gingerly I carried the dainty cup of black coffee across to the door of the “den.” There, deliberately, I tapped twice. The sound of my knock on the door reminded me of another occasion—on which I’d presented myself alone before the Governor, that afternoon at the Near Oriental; that first interview in his office. This _tête-à-tête_—the first in his own home—was going to be very different! CHAPTER XIII THE FIRST TÊTE-À-TÊTE A rather surprised voice called “Come in!” In I went—to find the Governor smoking a cigarette and sitting on the wide red-leather-padded club-fender of a room that was in complete contrast to the feminine domain I had left. Almost empty, but for its tall bookshelves, a grandfather’s clock, a couple of solid, “man-ny-looking” arm-chairs and a grand piano. I dropped my voice into its meekest Near Oriental tone as I announced: “Your coffee, Mr. Waters!” It was exactly the tone in which I’d so often said, “Your tea, Mr. Dundonald!” and yet I knew that the man before me would guess that this deference was, under the circumstances, only a subtle form of defiance. I handed him the cup. Then I stood there, outwardly as mild as milk, before him. One swift glance into the mirror over the mantelpiece beyond his broad shoulder—his shoulders are the best thing about him—had shown me an attractive picture enough—a big, blonde man faced by a _petite_, graceful girl, with her night-black hair swathed in a silky garland round her head, and her white shoulders and neck emerging from an admirably-cut dinner-gown of creamy charmeuse and chiffon patterned by rose-pink beadwork, whose colour echoed the soft flush in her cheeks.