He was in his shirt, but the sleeves were rolled up to the elbow over his muscled arms. He seemed to have been washing, for he held a towel loosely in one hand. She noticed vaguely that it was wet, or had been dipped in water and wrung out. It looked almost like a rope-end, twisted in that way.
Conscious that her own shoulders were bare, she resented the unusual intrusion of his entrance, and turned on him curtly.
“I have not finished dressing,” she said. “You can’t have this room yet. What do you want?”
“Why are you up so early?” he returned, as curtly as she had spoken.
“I am going down to see the Greville off!”
“You will go?”
Her eyes met his, the hard brown of them reddish with anger. “Yes, I will!” she said boldly.
He laid a tumbled letter before her, spreading it out that she might see the familiar writing, and speaking carefully, as though he picked his words.
“Captain Lewin’s bearer gave me this in the dark last night, telling me it was for me—I could not see the address, and he had evidently made a mistake, for he insisted on my reading it. You can see for yourself——”
He broke off, waiting with a terrible patience while she glanced over the page. There was no need to tell her more openly what she was to see, but her face hardly altered save that it was frankly insolent as she looked at him.