Darrow took a chair behind the little girl, so that he might look across at her mother. It was almost a necessity for him, at the moment, to let his eyes rest on Anna’s face, and to meet, now and then, the proud shyness of her gaze.
Madame de Chantelle presently enquired what had become of Owen, and a moment later the window behind her opened, and her grandson, gun in hand, came in from the terrace. As he stood there in the lamp-light, with dead leaves and bits of bramble clinging to his mud-spattered clothes, the scent of the night about him and its chill on his pale bright face, he really had the look of a young faun strayed in from the forest.
Effie abandoned the terrier to fly to him. “Oh, Owen, where in the world have you been? I walked miles and miles with Nurse and couldn’t find you, and we met Jean and he said he didn’t know where you’d gone.”
“Nobody knows where I go, or what I see when I get there—that’s the beauty of it!” he laughed back at her. “But if you’re good,” he added, “I’ll tell you about it one of these days.”
“Oh, now, Owen, now! I don’t really believe I’ll ever be much better than I am now.”
“Let Owen have his tea first,” her mother suggested; but the young man, declining the offer, propped his gun against the wall, and, lighting a cigarette, began to pace up and down the room in a way that reminded Darrow of his own caged wanderings. Effie pursued him with her blandishments, and for a while he poured out to her a low-voiced stream of nonsense; then he sat down beside his step-mother and leaned over to help himself to tea.
“Where’s Miss Viner?” he asked, as Effie climbed up on him. “Why isn’t she here to chain up this ungovernable infant?”
“Poor Miss Viner has a headache. Effie says she went to her room as soon as lessons were over, and sent word that she wouldn’t be down for tea.”
“Ah,” said Owen, abruptly setting down his cup. He stood up, lit another cigarette, and wandered away to the piano in the room beyond.
From the twilight where he sat a lonely music, borne on fantastic chords, floated to the group about the tea-table. Under its influence Madame de Chantelle’s meditative pauses increased in length and frequency, and Effie stretched herself on the hearth, her drowsy head against the dog. Presently her nurse appeared, and Anna rose at the same time. “Stop a minute in my sitting-room on your way up,” she paused to say to Darrow as she went.