“You know,” said Hovenden. “Why did you suddenly avoid me?”
“Did I?”
“You know you did.”
Irene was silent for a moment before she admitted: “Yes, perhaps I did.”
“But why,” he insisted, “why?”
“I don’t know,” she answered unhappily. She couldn’t tell him about Aunt Lilian.
Her tone emboldened Lord Hovenden to become more insistent. “You don’t know?” he repeated sarcastically, as though he were a lawyer carrying out a cross-examination. “Perhaps you were walking in your sleep all ve time.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said in a weary little voice.
“At any rate, I’m not too stupid to see vat you were running after vat fellow Chelifer.” Lord Hovenden became quite red in the face as he spoke. For the sake of his manly dignity, it was a pity that his th’s should sound quite so childish.
Irene said nothing, but sat quite still, her head bent, looking down at the slanting grove of olives. Framed within the square-cut hair, her face was sad.