Harry, who had foreseen the scene, and whose mouth was twitching, broke in cheerfully—
“Yes, mother, you know all about it. It’s a splendid thing for Thornbury to get Miss Hamilton here. But we mustn’t forget that she’s bicycled all the way from Elmslie, and when she has had her tea, I dare say Ruth would take her to her room.”
The mere suspicion of any one being tired brought out all Mrs Hilton’s tenderness.
“Of course, I ought to have remembered,” she said, with compunction; “but I have such a poor head, my dear, that I leave most things to Harry. Indeed, you must go to your room. But did you really come alone on a bicycle? And Anne was not afraid to let you! Well, to-morrow you must tell me all about it.”
Ruth Baynes, who carried off Claudia, was tall and slight, with a small aquiline nose and a good-tempered expression. It did not take lone to discover that she had two brothers whom she adored, and various nephews an I nieces, almost equally near her heart. Whatever Claudia said or did was capped by something they had said or done—generally better. She left her at last to peace and a bath, and no one could look fresher or less jaded than Claudia when the dinner-gong sounded.
Mr Hilton took her in to dinner—a thin querulous man, bent with rheumatism, and walking by the help of a stick. To her surprise, she found that he was a scholar, deeply read and fastidious, as even she could see, in his choice of expressions. The only subject, except that of books, which appeared to interest him, was his health, which excited a constant irritability. It was impossible for her to touch upon her own hobby, because he waved it away at once.
“I know nothing about the place, and I care less,” he said. “Harry is sufficiently fond of it to take that trouble off my shoulders, and I leave it all to him. Virtually he is master. If ever you should have the misfortune to be racked with rheumatism and lumbago, my dear young lady, you would find yourself quite unable to take an active part in life. So I shut myself into my library, and trouble nobody with my miseries.”
Claudia thought of Mrs Hilton’s tired eyes, and wondered whether they did not tell a different tale. She found the conversation languishing, and was glad when Captain Fenwick came to the rescue, talking of some classical translation just offered to the world. She glanced at him inattentively, and looked again. If he were Harry Hilton’s friend, here, she allowed, was a stronger personality, evident at once, for Harry was fair and sturdy, while this man was wiry, tall, and dark, carrying in his brown features marks of a more adventurous, perhaps impetuous, life. As she looked, his eyes fastened themselves upon hers with a penetration which she, for an instant, resented. The next moment her indifference returned, and she answered some remark of Miss Baynes’, made across the table, with the eagerness which easily awoke in her face, and gave it a constantly varying charm.
Harry was not a man of strategy, but he manoeuvred that night to prevent his mother from having anything but general conversation with her guest. The evening was rainy. Mr Hilton did not appear after dinner, and Ruth Baynes told Claudia they often did not see him for days.
“He is only happy in his library,” she added, “and sometimes he cannot even get there. Everything falls on Harry.”