"I don't want to talk about that—to you," she said. "You seem to have affairs of your own to attend to, and you can leave mine alone."
Lord Sedbergh took his departure, and with him went much of the glamour that he had thrown over the proposal which Joan now knew must come. Bobby Trench, undiluted, pleased her less than before, and in a house full of people, with most of whom he had been wont to make common merriment, it vexed her to be constantly left with him in a solitude of two.
There was an air of expectancy about the house. It hovered with amused gratification over John Spence and Nancy, but blew more coldly watchful upon herself and Bobby Trench. It seemed that if she did what she bitterly told herself was expected of her, she would not please anybody particularly, except Bobby Trench himself. Even her father seemed to watch her suspiciously, but that she supposed was because he was doubtful whether naughtiness would not prevail in her after all. As for her mother, she invited no confidences. Joan felt more and more alone, and more and more dissatisfied with herself and everybody about her. Her intercourse with Bobby Trench was less evenly amicable than it had been, for she felt her power to make him suffer for some of her moods. But he did, sometimes, with his unfailing cheerfulness lift her out of them, and she wavered between resentment against him for being the past cause of her present troubles, and remorseful gratitude for his unconquerable fidelity.
She had been unusually fractious with him on the afternoon preceding the ball. Perhaps it was because she could not go to it herself, being out of sorts, and confined to the house by doctor's orders. The house-party was on the ice on the lake, enjoying itself exceedingly. She and Bobby were sitting in front of the fire in the morning-room.
"I say, you seem to have got out of bed the wrong side this morning," he said with a conciliatory grin. "What have you got the hump about?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Joan. "Everything is so dull, and everybody is so horrid."
"You're not such good pals with Nancy as you used to be, are you?" he asked after a pause.
"That has nothing to do with you," she said, following her mood of snappish domination over him.
His reply startled her. "Look here," he said, "I'm getting fed up with this. I seem to be about the only person in the house who takes any trouble to make themselves agreeable to you, and I'm the only person you can't treat with ordinary politeness. What's the matter? What have I done?"
He spoke sharply, as he had not spoken before, and his words brought home to her the sad state of isolation in which she imagined herself to be living.