Explore "The Talleyrand Maxim" by J.S. Fletcher on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Had any third person been present, closely to observe the meeting of these two young people, he would have seen that the one to whom it was unexpected and a surprise was outwardly as calm and self-possessed as if the other had come there to keep an ordinary business appointment.
Nesta Mallathorpe, looking very dignified and almost stately in her mourning, was obviously angry, indignant, and agitated. But Pratt was as cool and as fully at his ease as if he were back in Eldrick's office, receiving the everyday ordinary client. He swept his door open and executed his politest bow -- and was clever enough to pretend that he saw nothing of his visitor's agitation. Yet deep within himself he felt more tremors than one, and it needed all his powers of dissimulation to act and speak as if this were the most usual of occurrences.