Mrs. Delarayne felt a twinge in her heart, and as she proceeded to pour out tea, her loathing for Denis Malster received such a sudden access of strength that she found it hard to be civil.
"I don't quite see," she snapped, "why they look more splendid side by side, as you put it, than one by one."
Miss Mallowcoid cast a glance full of reproach at her sister, and wondered what it was that induced Sir Joseph to submit as kindly as he did, day after day, to such monstrous treatment.
CHAPTER XVI
There was a dance at Brineweald that evening, and everybody who was anybody in the neighbourhood had been invited. The Vicar's family, the doctor's children, the Swynnertons from Barbacan, the Blights from the Castle, and one or two people from Folkestone, were among the guests, while a band had been ordered down from Ashbury for the occasion.
Lord Henry was entirely satisfied with the arrangement. It was calculated to keep the two Brineweald households under his eye the whole evening, and to prevent those wanderings which, while they complicated his task, also made it difficult for him to follow developments.
To Denis Malster, on the other hand, the dance was a most unwelcome disturbance. Fearing from the turn events had taken that day that he had not gone far enough with Leonetta in order to be able to rely absolutely on her single-minded attachment, he foresaw that the dance that evening would offer few opportunities, if any, of repairing his omission, and he was accordingly not in the best of moods to enjoy it.
As the sufferer from some fatal disease is the last to be convinced that his condition is hopeless, so the ardent lover, for whom things are going none too smoothly, is the last to be persuaded that he is really losing ground.