MAURICE KENYON'S VIEWS.
quietly into the room. Perhaps he had not seen or heard so very much. Certainly he glanced very keenly—first at Lesley, who leaned half-fainting against the piano, and then at Oliver Trent, who had slunk backwards to the rug before the fire; but he said nothing, and for a minute or two an embarrassed silence prevailed in the room. Lesley then raised herself up a little, and Oliver began to speak.
"I was just going," he said, with a nervous attempt at a laugh. "I haven't much time to-night, and was just hurrying away. I must come in another time."
Mr. Brooke took up a commanding position on the rug, put his hands in his pockets, and surveyed the room in silence. Perhaps Oliver felt the silence to be ominous, for he did not try to shake hands or to utter any commonplaces, but took his leave with a hurried "Good-afternoon" that neither father nor daughter returned. The door shut behind him: they heard the sound of his footsteps on the stairs and the closing of the hall door. Then Lesley bestirred herself with the sensation of a wounded animal that wishes to hide its hurt: she wanted to get away and seek the darkness and solitude of her room upstairs. But before she reached the door Mr. Brooke's voice arrested her.
"Lesley."
She stopped short, and looked at him. Her heart beat so suffocatingly loud and fast that she could not speak.
"I don't trust that young man, Lesley," was what her father said quite quietly.
Then there was a pause. Lesley was still tongue-tied, and Mr. Brooke did not seem to know what to do or say. He walked away from the fire and began to finger some papers on a table, although it was quite too dark to see any of these. Inwardly he was wondering how much or how little he ought to say.
"I wish he would not come quite so often," he remarked.