“Oh, didn't you know?” Thorpe pursued, with an accession of amiability. He visibly had pleasure in the disclosure of the other's ignorance. “They've been in London for two or three weeks. That is, Miss Madden has been taking flying trips to see cathedrals and so on, but Lady Cressage has stayed in town. Their long journeyings have rather done her up.” He looked Plowden straight in the eye, and added with an air of deliberation: “I'm rather anxious about her health.”
The nobleman frankly abandoned his efforts to maintain an undisturbed front. “You—are—anxious,” he repeated, frowning in displeased wonderment.
“Why yes—why not?” demanded Thorpe, with a sudden growl in his voice. As he covered the handsome Viscount with his heavy, intent gaze, impulses of wrath stirred within him. Why should this fop of a lordling put on this air of contemptuous incredulity? “What is there so amazing about that? Why shouldn't I be anxious?”
The peremptory harshness of his manner, and the scowl on his big, lowering face, brought a sort of self-control back to the other. He shrugged his shoulders, with an attempt at nonchalance. “Why not indeed!” he said, as lightly as he could. With hands on knees, he bent forward as if to rise. “But perhaps I'd better come in another day,” he suggested, tentatively. “I'm interrupting you.”
“No—sit still,” Thorpe bade him, and then, with chin settled more determinedly than ever in his cravat, sat eyeing him in a long, dour silence.
Lord Plowden found it impossible to obtain from this massive, apathetic visage any clue to the thoughts working behind it. He chanced to recall the time when he had discussed with Thorpe the meaning and values of this inscrutable expression which the latter's countenance could assume. It had seemed interesting and even admirable to him then—but then he had not foreseen the possibility that he himself might some day confront its adamantine barrier with a sinking heart. All at once he could bear this implacable sphinx-gaze no longer.
“I'm sure some other day would be better,” he urged, with an open overture to propitiation in his tone. “You're not in the mood to be bothered with my affairs today.”
“As much today as any other,” Thorpe answered him, slowly.
The other sat suddenly upright—and then upon a moment's reflection rose to his feet. “I don't in the least know what to make of all this,” he said, with nervous precipitancy. “If I've offended you in any way, say so, and I will apologize at once. But treatment of this sort passes my comprehension.”
Thorpe in truth did not himself comprehend it much more clearly. Some strange freak of wilfulness impelled him to pursue this unintelligible persecution. “I've said nothing about any offense,” he declared, in a hard, deliberate voice. “It is your own word. All the same—I mention the name of a lady—a lady, mind you, whom I met under your own roof—and you strike attitudes and put on airs as if—as if I wasn't good enough!”