She was advancing towards him, with her shaking hands held out. He deliberately put a table loaded with bibelots between them, not with the intention of hurting her, for he was not thinking of her at all, but because his flesh crept at the thought of being touched by her. “I tell you I don’t know what he means to do. I don’t know that it matters much. The mere fact — now that I know it’s true — It’s no use talking. I only came to find out — and I have. So that’s all.”
He turned towards the door. She called after him in a distracted voice: “Oh, don’t go like that! I can’t think!”
“No,” he said hardly. “I can’t think either. I daresay I shall be able to, when — when I’ve got more used to the idea of being just another of Father’s bastards.”
“Oh, no, no!” she whispered foolishly, and again stretched out her hand to him. But he went away without looking back, and a minute later she heard the clatter of his horse’s hooves diminishing in the distance.
Chapter Fourteen
The morning had not passed pleasantly for many members of the Penhallow family. Whatever gossip might be rife in the kitchen on the subject of Raymond’s quarrel with his father, no echo of this reached the family, no one, in fact, having the least idea that a quarrel had taken place; but there were troubles enough besides that to agitate the household. Vivian, who had come down late to breakfast, when only Clara, Conrad, Aubrey and Charmian still sat round the table, had rather unaccountably created a scene, during the course of which she had not only favoured those of the Penhallows who were present with her full and frank opinion of their manners, morals, and habits, but had launched forth into a diatribe against Penhallow himself, and had ended by declaring hysterically that if she did not soon escape from Trevellin she would go mad. After that, she had slapped Conrad’s face, because he laughed at her, and rushed out of the room, leaving her breakfast untouched. She was later heard, wildly sobbing, in the library, to which apartment it was conjectured that she had fled in the well-founded belief that few of the Penhallows were likely to enter it.
She left the dining-room party labouring under a strong feeling of surprise, for although she was known to be moody, she had never before been seen to lose all control over herself. The immediate cause of her outbreak seemed too trivial to warrant such a display of emotion. She had exploded with wrath at finding that Conrad had carelessly put a used plate (his own) in her place at the table, instead of removing it to the sideboard.
“And who shall blame her?” said Aubrey. “I do think that egg-stains are quite too alienating, don’t you? The twins simply have no sensibility at all.”
“But what’s she want to kick up such a shindy about?” demanded Conrad. “She’d only got to move it, hang it all! Anyone would think I’d put a live toad in her place!”
“I wouldn’t pay any attention to Vivian’s tantrums, if I were you,” Clara said. “I daresay she has her troubles.”