"Little devil!" he muttered in his teeth; and then he laughed, and his eyes cleared, and he went out upon the colonnaded verandah and walked up and down, with his hands behind him, till the gong clanged for dinner.
Sedately he marched into the dining-room and stood by the table, he and the servants, all silent alike, waiting for host and hostess to come downstairs. Then in flounced Maude, in her glittering whiteness, with her head up, and a wicked flash of triumph in her eyes as she met the wooden stare of her stepson; and her husband followed at her heels, furtive, downcast, troubled—pretending for the present that all was well, and failing to convince even the footman that it was so. Tony was at once aware that Maude had "told his father of him," and all through dinner he was trying to forecast what the result would be. She sparkled balefully for a time, trying to tease him into disputatious talk; but his cold irresponsiveness cowed her into silence too, and the resource of wistful glances that hinted at remorse and tears. It was a dismal meal. When it was happily at an end, and she rose from her plate of strawberries, he marched to the door and held it open for her, standing stiffly, like a soldier sentinel. She looked at him appealingly, and whispered "Forgive me," as she swept slowly out; but he stared stonily over her head and took no notice.
Shutting the door sharply behind her, he returned to his seat at the table. The gliding servants vanished, and his father pushed the wine towards him. There was a long silence, which he would not break. The old man cleared his throat a few times, and smacked his lips over his old port. At last their eyes met, and the spell was lifted.
"What's this, my boy, about—about poor Liddon's daughter?"
Anthony laid a broad palm over his father's hand resting on the table. "Don't let us talk of it here, daddy," he said, with gruff gentleness. "Finish your wine comfortably. Then we'll go into the smoking-room, and I'll tell you all about it."
Mr. Churchill brisked up, tossed off his port, and was ready for the smoking-room at once. It was detached from the house, and its French doors opened upon a retired lawn, on which the moon shone between the shadows of shrubs and trees. They drew armchairs towards the threshold, and lit their pipes, but not the lamps, and talked and talked in the cooling twilight, as men who had confidence in one another.
At first the father would not hear of the projected match. He belonged to a vulgar little world that was eaten up with the love of money, and could not despise the conventions of his caste. He argued, gently but obstinately, that it would "never do, you know," for quite a long time, thinking of what Maude would say to him if he failed to be firm; but a mention of Maude's homely predecessor, and the days when there was no high fashion in the family, touched his susceptible heart. Tony drew comparisons between his dead mother, his stepmother and his proposed wife, and morals therefrom.
"Well, well," the old gentleman admitted, "there's something in that."
"Where would you have been without her, all that time when you were poor and struggling?"
"True. But you are not poor and struggling."