This was the way in which she always treated him; and as he rather sulkily continued his dinner he asked himself if it was "good enough." If she were willing to be decent, he might possibly fall in love with her, but he was not going to stand being treated like a schoolboy. Elizabeth might go and hang herself.
She made no attempt to entice him out of the silence he was thus too easily able to maintain for the rest of the meal.
But in the drawing-room after dinner, he found that the family as a whole seemed inclined to put him on a new footing. Even Mrs Turner, who had so far almost ignored him, came up and began to talk about the gardens. She was a rather stout woman with something of her brother's carelessness in the matter of dress, and Arthur had wondered how her husband had ever managed to fall in love with her. To-night, however, it occurred to him for the first time that she might in her youth have been the very prototype of her niece Elizabeth.
They had only been talking for a few minutes when her brother joined them. As usual, after dinner, his face was flushed and puffy—an effect due, Arthur judged, to the food rather than to the wine he had taken.
"So you're thinking of joining the family party for a time, I hear?" he began in a friendly voice.
"Well, I haven't decided anything yet," Arthur replied, and waited to see if his uncle would echo his sister's and his daughter's "You will."
He did not. He was fidgeting with his cigar, the ash of which he had dropped and smeared all over his dinner-jacket and waistcoat.
"Giving up the Canada idea, any way?" was his response.
"It was never more than an idea," Arthur said.
"Not a bad one, all the same," his uncle murmured, and then apparently feeling that he was making a mess of what he had to say, he went on, "However, it's not for me to advise you. I can't boast that I'm any sort of example for you, eh, Catherine?"