"Nothing whatever to do with Eleanor," Elizabeth said, without waiting for him to finish his sentence.
"What is it, then?" he insisted.
"About him," she said, indicating Kenyon Turner. "I can't possibly tell you now."
But after dinner he received enlightenment as to the cause of the impending "fuss" from the prime disturber of the peace himself.
"Care to have a game of pills?" he asked, coming over to Arthur as they were leaving the dining-room.
His first instinct was to refuse. The conceit of the fellow annoyed him—he had two lines of braid down his dress trousers—but Arthur was on the top of his form just then, and was spurred by a desire to beat him at what was, no doubt, his own game. He had been so cursedly supercilious about playing golf for "medical reasons."
"Don't mind," he said in the true Hartling manner of one condescending to a casual visitor from the outside.
But although he did, in fact, beat young Turner, he realised that his victory was due to the fact that his opponent was "off his game," and could probably give him twenty in a hundred on ordinary occasions. Young Turner's touch was almost as delicate as his father's.
"I'm no earthly good to-night," he said, putting down his cue at the conclusion of the game. "All this business is such an infernal worry."