"She's quite a jolly girl," Arthur replied coldly.
Jolly? he questioned that the moment he had spoken, but made no effort to retract the adjective. He had an inclination to depreciate Elizabeth now that he was with Eleanor, an inclination that he repressed as being in bad taste, even a trifle vulgar. Nevertheless, he would have liked to make it quite clear that he was not in love with Elizabeth.
When Eleanor spoke again, however, Elizabeth had fallen out of the conversation. "I do see that it looks like hard lines on you," she said more gently; "but as you want to know what I really think, I must tell you. And all that I can say is," she paused, and there was a thrill of passion in her voice as she concluded: "that if I were you I would get away from here, now, at once, to-night...."
"But, why?" he protested, half amused at the fantastic suggestion of his leaving Hartling that night. "There must be some reason, I mean, for—well—such an extravagant remedy as that."
"I can't give you any reasons," she said.
He groaned with an intentional effect of exaggeration.
"Have you all got some terrible secret that you're hiding?" he asked. "I assure you one really gets that impression. I had begun to wonder whether perhaps Mr Kenyon was a dangerous lunatic or something, before I saw him this evening. Now, I wonder if he's the only one of you that's perfectly sane. Or is it just this beastly money of yours? Are they afraid up at the house that I want some of it, because if they are you can tell them that I don't. They all seem to think I'm cadging. Hubert began it the first afternoon I was here. I tell you it's simply incomprehensible to me—the whole attitude."
Eleanor did not appear to be in the least offended by this outbreak, but her voice had a new note of agitation in it as she said,—
"Didn't my grandfather offer to do anything for you, when you were talking this evening? Didn't he say anything to you about his will?"