Miss Barfoot changed the topic.
When, not long after, the ladies left him to meditate over his glass of wine, Everard curiously surveyed the room. Then his eyelids drooped, he smiled absently, and a calm sigh seemed to relieve his chest. The claret had no particular quality to recommend it, and in any case he would have drunk very little, for as regards the bottle his nature was abstemious.
“It is as I expected,” Miss Barfoot was saying to her friend in the drawing-room. “He has changed very noticeably.”
“Mr. Barfoot isn’t quite the man your remarks had suggested to me,” Rhoda replied.
“I fancy he is no longer the man I knew. His manners are wonderfully improved. He used to assert himself in rather alarming ways. His letter, to be sure, had the old tone, or something of it.”
“I will go to the library for an hour,” said Rhoda, who had not seated herself. “Mr. Barfoot won’t leave before ten, I suppose?”
“I don’t think there will be any private talk.”
“Still, if you will let me—”
So, when Everard appeared, he found his cousin alone.
“What are you going to do?” she asked of him good-naturedly.