She withdrew her hand from Lady Rossiter's kind, enveloping clasp and put it into the pocket of her pinafore very deliberately.
"On Saturdays I'm going to the estate office with you, I hope. Didn't we arrange that?" she asked Mark Easter.
"If you have nothing better to do, I should be most grateful. Everything is in confusion there, since my clerk had to leave on account of sudden illness."
"I shall like it very much," said Miss Marchrose, with a very charming smile, and still addressing herself exclusively to Mark. "And I've nothing better to do at all, thank you."
Julian, while inwardly applauding her, wondered whether she had herself been entirely aware of the full efficiency of the oblique retaliation.
On the whole, he thought that she had.
V
As Julian pursued his acquaintance with Miss Marchrose—and he was by no means minded to let it drop—he came more and more to the conclusion that she had been quite as conscious as himself of the mutual antagonism which Edna and she had roused in one another on the rather disastrous occasion of their meeting.
She neither came over to Culmhayes nor showed any disposition to join Lady Rossiter's cherished nature-classes, the final sessions of which were drawing near with the approach of the colder weather.
Julian saw her at the College, where she worked hard and successfully, and once or twice at his own estate office, where she frequently replaced Mark Easter's absent clerk.