“Shut up, you swine!” said Conrad, under his breath.
Eugene smiled sweetly at him. “What a touching picture of loyalty you do present, to be sure, Con!”
Bart looked dangerous, and took a step towards Eugene’s chair. He was arrested by Raymond, who caught his eye, and jerked his chin imperatively in the direction of the door. After hesitating for an instant, he shrugged, and turned to lay hold of Penhallow’s chair. He pushed it out of the room, Reuben following him.
“And to think,” said Aubrey, stretching himself out at full length on the sofa, “that this evening has been but a foretaste of what we shall be called upon to undergo tomorrow! Oh, I do think, don’t you, that Father is becoming quite too dreadfully oppressive?”
Chapter Sixteen
Raymond was long in falling asleep that night. Unable to lie still in his bed, but continually tossing and turning, he got up after an hour, and, putting on his trousers and a tweed jacket over his pyjamas, and thrusting his feet into a pair of brogues, went downstairs, and let himself softly out of the house into the moonlit garden. Here he walked up and down with his pipe gripped between his teeth, and his head filled with hard, tangled thoughts, until the chill of the night, and his own physical and mental fatigue, finally drove him in again. The broad stairs creaked under his feet as he went up them, and as he crossed the upper hall the door into his sister’s room opened, and Charmian came out with an electric torch in her hand.
“Who’s that?” she said sharply.
The moonlight, streaming in through the great uncurtained window above the stairs, made the torch superflous. She switched it off as she saw Raymond, with his hand already upon his bedroom door-handle.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Sorry I woke you.”
She had cast a severe, masculine dressing-gown over her shoulders, and now slid her arms into it, and tied its cord round her waist. “Anything wrong?” she asked, observing his attire.