To-morrow he might make an opportunity to have that talk with Eleanor. He would like her to understand his reasons for staying on at Hartling. She ought to know that, as he had just written to Somers, he meant to go in for a serious course of study....
He could not conjure up the image of Eleanor at will, for some reason, but sometimes it came unexpectedly with amazing vividness when he was not thinking of her—some such picture of her as her swift glance down at him in the hall when she had been going upstairs that evening.
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The arrangements for breakfast at Hartling were in keeping with Arthur's early estimate of the place as a first-class hotel. The members of the family came down when they chose, and between eight and ten o'clock there were rarely more than two people in the breakfast-room at the same time. Miss Kenyon and Hubert came first. Hubert had a habit of getting up at six in the summer, and Miss Kenyon was a precisian. Arthur succeeded them between half-past eight and nine and sometimes had his aunt for a companion. The other four straggled in uncertainly—Joe Kenyon or his sister was always the last—and occasionally their meals overlapped. So much Arthur knew from experience, and as he had never seen Eleanor in the morning, he had inferred that she probably breakfasted with her grandfather upstairs.
He was greatly surprised, therefore, to find her at the table when he entered the room at half-past eight the next morning, surprised and for a minute or two distinctly embarrassed. He was never now in the mood for conversation so early in the day.