"I'm sorry you didn't wait for me to come downstairs the other day," she said, after they had exchanged greetings, "because I could have told you that my father agreed with me—that it wouldn't be possible for us to accept your kind help."
"I hope he's better," was Davenant's only answer.
"Much better, thank you. When he's able to see you, I know he will want to express his gratitude more fully than I can."
"I hoped he'd be able to see me to-day. I was on my way to Tory Hill."
She was annoyed both by his persistency and by the coolness of his manner, as, leaning on his stick, he stood looking down at her. He looked down in a way that obliged her to look up. She had not realized till now how big and tall he was. She noticed, too, the squareness of his jaw, the force of his chin, and the compression of his straight, thin lips beneath the long curve of his mustache. In spite of his air of granite imperturbability, she saw that his fair skin was subject to little flushes of embarrassment or shyness, like a girl's. As she was in a mood to criticize, she called this absurd and said of his blue eyes, resting on her with a pensive directness, as though he were studying her from a long way off, that they were hard. Deep-set and caverned under heavy, overhanging brows, they more than any other feature imparted to his face the frowning and farouche effect by which she judged him. Had it not been for that, her hostility to everything he said and did might not have been so prompt. That he was working to get her into his power became more than ever a conviction the minute she looked into what she called that lowering gaze.
All the same, the moment was one for diplomatic action rather than for force. She allowed a half-smile to come to her lips, and her voice to take a tone in which there was frank request, as she said: "I wish you wouldn't go."
"I shouldn't if it wasn't important. I don't want to annoy you more than I can help."
"I don't see how anything can be important when—when there's nothing to be done."
"There's a good deal to be done if we choose to do it; but we must choose at once. The Benn crowd is getting restive."
"That doesn't make any difference to us. My father has decided to take the consequences of his acts."