Rada, of her own accord, made answer to the unspoken question. "I think I'm beginning to hate him," she asserted.
Mostyn turned his head away and, despite himself, his lips parted in a smile, for he understood the words were spoken in temper and bore no real significance. Had she not said the same to him? And for the time being he had been fool enough to believe it.
The truth was, so he told himself a little sadly, after Rada had left him, that she cared for no one at all. It was the truth that she had written in her letter. But could she not grow to care? She had had so little of love in her life that, as yet, she hardly knew the meaning of the word.
"You are very good to me," so she had said when she left him that morning, refusing his company on her way home: not that she would not have been pleased to have it, but because she knew his time was valuable. "I'm glad that we are friends, Mostyn"—she had come to call him by his Christian name by now—"though I can't see what there is in me for you to trouble yourself about."
Mostyn would have liked to have told her there and then, but once more discretion urged silence.
His adventures of that morning were, however, not yet concluded, for before he turned in at the stable gates he met Jack Treves himself lounging heavily out, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his breeches, his cap tilted to one side of his head, a cigarette thrust between his lips and carried at an aggressive upward angle.
"Good morning, Treves," said Mostyn. He was always on terms of armed neutrality with the trainer's son, and he affected to take no notice of the scowls with which the latter usually met him, and the scarcely veiled impertinence of the tone which he was wont to adopt. Mostyn had no wish to quarrel with Jack Treves, mainly for Rada's sake, but also because he had a sincere respect for Jack's father, the rough, simple-minded, and uneducated old trainer whom, nevertheless, he recognised as a straightforward and honest man, one who was serving him faithfully, and who was doing his utmost to ensure Gulliver's victory.
Jack came to a halt, standing aggressively between Mostyn and the stable gates. He drew his hands from his pockets, removed the cigarette from between his lips and blew out a cloud of smoke—smoke the odour of which fell offensively upon Mostyn's nostrils. Jack's fancy in tobacco was not of the most refined order.
"I saw you talkin' to Rada just now," he said. "Been tryin' to comfort her, I suppose, because I thought it time to have my say? A nice sort of comforter you are!" There was a vicious sneer upon his lips. "Look here," he went on, taking a menacing step forward and dropping the tone of sarcasm which he had not the wit to maintain, "what do you mean by it?"
"Please explain yourself." Mostyn spoke very quietly; on such occasions he never lost his temper, and always held himself under complete control. His calmness galled his adversary.