And unto this was added consternation when, as they
mounted the steps, Miss Sherwood smilingly crossed the piazza and
welcomed her without waiting for an introduction. Maggie mumbled some
reply; she later could not remember what it was. Indeed she never had
met such a woman: so finished, so gracious, so unaffected, with a
sparkle of humor in her brown eyes; and the rich plainness of her
white linen frock made Maggie conscious that her own supposed
simplicity was cheap and ostentatious. If Miss Sherwood had received
her with hostility, doubt, or even chilled civility, the situation
would have been easier; the aroused Maggie would then have made use of
her own great endowment of hauteur and self-esteem. But to be received
with this frank cordiality, on a basis of a equality with this
finished woman--that left Maggie for the moment without arms. She had,
in her high moments, believed herself an adventuress whose poise and
plans nothing could unbalance. Now she found herself suddenly just a
young girl of eighteen who didn't know what to do.
Had Maggie but known it that sudden unconscious confusion, which
seemed to betray her, was really more effective for her purpose than
would have been the best of conscious acting. It established her at
once as an unstagey ingenue--simple, unspoiled, unacquainted with the
formulas and formalities of the world.
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