“Oh, nothing. I was only wondering how long he would be able to brazen it out?”
“Brazen what out?”
“Why, sitting there with my eye upon him. Couldn’t you see how restless he got?”
“Restless!” repeated Arthur, quickly. “Why should he be restless?”
Conrad laughed again.
“Never mind, my boy. I bear him no malice. The least said the soonest mended.”
Monica was silent and a little troubled. She liked to understand things plainly. It seemed to her an unnatural thing for two men to be at almost open feud, yet unwilling to say a word as to the cause of their mutual antagonism. She thought that if they met beneath her father’s roof they should be willing to do so as friends.
Her gravity did not escape Conrad’s notice.
“Has he been maligning me already?” he asked, suddenly, with a subdued flash in his eyes.
“No,” answered Monica, with a sort of involuntary coldness. “He has not said a word. I do not think,” she added presently, with a gentle dignity of manner, “that I should listen very readily from the lips of a stranger to stories detrimental to an old companion and playmate, told behind his back.”