He paused half-way up the stairs and looked down into the hall. He could see the great elephant's pad standing there, with an effect of gross and imperturbable solidity. Since last night, he had come in some odd way to associate that clumping thing with Eleanor. He could almost see her now, a slender, solemn child, dusty with recent travel, waiting to learn her destiny....
And it was Eleanor whom he saw first when he entered Mr Kenyon's suite of apartments. She had answered his knock—no one went into those rooms without knocking—and he found her standing near the door with an effect of impatience.
"Are you going to say anything to him about Hubert?" she asked at once in a low voice.
Arthur hesitated before he said, "I've been thinking that perhaps, on the whole, it would be better if I didn't. It might make it worse for him. I've no sort of influence with Mr Kenyon, I mean."
She looked at him suspiciously. He could not mistake the doubt in her eyes. She did not believe in the excuse that he had put forward. She had always mistrusted him for some reason or other.
"Well, have I?" he persisted feebly.
"None whatever, I should imagine," she said; "only, I thought...." She paused and looked towards the closed door of the inner room. "You're ten minutes late now," she added inconsequently.
He was irated by her attitude towards him, her dismissal of him as a person of no importance. He longed to show her that he was not a man to be lightly despised. But all he could find to say was a foolish, petulant accusation of her own motives. Had she not impugned his?
"No doubt you would be glad enough to see me turned out," he said, with an almost childlike sullenness. "You've always disliked me."
She stood quite still, staring past him towards the door of her grandfather's room. She was again wearing the dress of pale gray linen in which he had first seen her; and she looked exquisitely sweet, fresh, and young. But he was glad that he had been rude to her. By that rudeness he had shown that he thought of her, and that he resented her opinion of him. He would sooner that she hated him than that she should be indifferent.