“I’m not so sure that he is a boor. He’s keeping the boor in a box, anyhow, and has turned the key on him. He’s quite changed. You can’t deny it.”
Colin slipped his arm out of Violet’s. “Raymond’s cleverer than I thought,” he said. “All this fortnight it has puzzled me to know what he’s been at, but now I see. He’s been improving his position with father and with you.”
“He has certainly done that,” said Violet.
“So, if he asks you, you intend to marry him?” asked Colin.
“I think so.”
“I shall hate you if you do,” said he.
“Why? How can it matter to you? If you were in love with me it would be different, or if I were in love with you. Oh, we’ve talked it all over before; there’s nothing new.”
They had passed through the cut entrance in the yew hedge into the moonlight, and Violet, turning, looked at her companion. Colin’s face was brilliantly illuminated. By some optical illusion that came and went in a flash, he looked at that moment as if his face was lit from within, so strangely it shone against the dark serge of the hedge for background. There was an unearthly beauty about it that somehow appalled her. He seemed like some incarnation, ageless and youthful, of the fortunes of the house. But the impression was infinitesimal in duration, and she laughed.
“Colin, you looked so wonderful just now,” she said. “You looked like all the Staniers rolled into one.”
Somehow this annoyed him. “Raymond included, I suppose?” he asked. “But you’re wrong; there is something new. Hitherto you’ve only considered Raymond as a necessary adjunct to being mistress here; now you’re considering him as a man you can imagine loving. Hasn’t he got enough already? Good God, how I hate him!”