“I fancied that you had though, without any reason,” persisted he. “I thought it rather ungrateful of you, because I was so awfully glad to meet you again.”
“Thank you.”
“Glad too, for Lady Sarah’s sake and Sir Robert’s, because they’re so pleased with your devotion to Caryl, and with the way you’ve dropped into the family interests.”
To Rhoda’s great joy they had reached the high road, and she was able to escape him by getting on a tram-car which would take her into Dourville. He got in too, but there were other passengers inside, so that he had to make his conversation more general and less embarrassing.
But she could not help fancying, when she got home and thought over their walk, that he had had something to say which he had had no opportunity of saying, and she resolved to do her best to avoid him for the future.
As she came to that conclusion, she became conscious, to her own surprise, that in spite of his merry eyes, his liveliness and his charm, in spite of her belief that his guilt in the matter of Langton’s death could not have been that of murder, she was more afraid of Jack Rotherfield than she had ever been of any man in her life before.
And she realised that in the rare moments when she got a glimpse of his features in repose, there were lines in his face which should not have been there, lines which indicated that, under all his surface gaiety and charm, there was all the hardness and the capacity for cruelty of an utterly selfish nature.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MISSING SNUFF-BOXES
When she reached home, Rhoda was met in the hall by Sir Robert. His usually placid countenance was disturbed, and a horrible suspicion flashed through her mind, as he came straight towards her, that he was going to ask her some awkward questions about Lady Sarah or Mr. Rotherfield.
Advancing towards her so eagerly that it was clear he had been waiting for her, he said: