“Yes,” said Mrs. Lawrence, “there’ll have to be a man who can call out and let us know.”
Tony felt his father’s eyes upon him. He had wondered why he had said nothing to him about his last night’s absence, but it had not really made him uneasy. After all, that was very unimportant, what his father or any of the rest of them did or thought, compared with what Morelli was doing. He was curiously tired, tired in body and tired in mind, and he couldn’t think very clearly about anything. But he saw Morelli continually before him. Morelli coming round the table towards him, smiling—Morelli . . . What was he doing to Janet?
He wanted to speak to Maradick, but it was so hard to get to him when there were all these other people in the room. The gaiety had gone out of his eyes, the laughter from his lips. Maradick was everything now; it all depended on Maradick.
“You’re looking tired,” Alice said. She had been watching him, and she knew at once that he was in trouble. Of course anyone could see that he wasn’t himself, but she, who had known him all his life, could see that there was more in it than that. Indeed, she could never remember to have seen him like that before. Oh! if he would only let her help him!
She had not been having a particularly good time herself just lately, but she meant there to be nothing selfish about her unhappiness. There are certain people who are proud of unrequited affection and pass those whom they love with heads raised and a kind of “See what I’m suffering for you!” air. They are incomparable nuisances!
Alice had been rather inclined at first to treat Tony in the same sort of way, but now the one thought that she had was to help him if only he would let her! Perhaps, after all, it was nothing. Probably he’d had a row with the girl last night, or he was worried, perhaps, by Sir Richard.
“Tony,” she said, putting her hand for a moment on his arm, “we are pals, aren’t we?”
“Why, of course,” pulling himself suddenly away from Janet and her possible danger and trying to realise the girl at his side.
“Because,” she went on, looking out of the window, “I’ve been a bit of a nuisance lately—not much of a companion, I’m afraid—out of sorts and grumpy. But now I want you to let me help if there’s anything I can do. There might be something, perhaps. You know”—she stopped a moment—“that I saw her down on the beach the other day. If there was anything——”
She stopped awkwardly.