"Oh I know, so that is the man, Allan! I can understand that child's feeling, I don't like him, I don't like him, there is something about him——"
Kathleen's eyes followed the black figure down the road. "I don't know why," she said, "it may be unjust and probably is, but I—I seemed to feel a chill, a sense of dislike, of distaste as he passed us by!"
"Poor wretch, he is to be pitied since Kathleen dislikes him!" Scarsdale said and a note of irony and sarcasm crept into his voice, which she detected in a moment and her cheeks flushed a little.
"I am sorry," she said gently, "I may be mistaken, I hope I am, one is often mistaken in one's likes and dislikes, it is not well to trust too much to instinct!"
"What did she mean?" Scarsdale wondered, but he said nothing and they went back into the house, the house that seemed strangely deserted and silent.
When the friends, whose pleasant voices have sounded in the rooms, have gone their ways, like them much or little as we may, there is always a sense of loneliness and desertion about the place. Who can tell if the hospitable door will ever open to them again? Noisy Mr. Coombe and embarrassed Mr. Jobson—we have no great affection for them perhaps, yet because they were here a while ago and the place seems empty without them, we can spare them a passing regret, we can admit to ourselves that we miss them just a little.
"You will find it a little dull now, I am afraid Harold," Kathleen said.
"I shall not find it dull here!"
"Dull——" when she was near, perhaps that was what his words meant to convey, but Allan, who heard them, noticed no double meaning, no particular tenderness underlying the words.
"Allan must neglect Mr. Custance a little now and give you more of his time."