When Tudor spoke again, it was upon a totally different matter. His voice was slightly aggressive as he said: "That Evesham boy seems to be for ever turning up at the Vicarage now. He's an ill-mannered cub. I wonder you encourage him."
"Do I encourage him?" Avery asked.
He made a movement of irritation. "He would scarcely be such a constant visitor if you didn't."
Avery smiled faintly and not very humorously in the darkness. "It is
Jeanie he comes to see," she observed.
"Oh, obviously." Tudor's retort was so ironical as to be almost rude.
She received it in silence, and after a moment he made a half-grudging amendment.
"He never showed any interest in Jeanie before, you know. I don't think she is the sole attraction."
"No?" said Avery.
Her response was perfectly courteous, but so vague that it sounded to Lennox Tudor as if she were thinking of something else. He clenched his hand hard upon the handle of his whip.
"People tolerate him for the sake of his position," he said bitterly. "But to my mind he is insufferable. His father was a scapegrace, as everyone knows. His mother was a circus girl. And his grandmother—an Italian—was divorced by Sir Beverley before they had been married two years."