While she looked forth, with this expression deepening on her face, there came a short, heavy knock upon the door; before she had time to answer, the curtain was pushed aside, and Otho came in.
‘Otho!’ she exclaimed, for it was the first time he had entered the room since her arrival.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said, glancing round. ‘What are you doing here, all alone?’
‘Reading Homer,’ said Eleanor, promptly, with a rather wicked gleam in her eye. As she had expected, an expression of slight alarm crossed Otho’s countenance. But he drew a chair forward and sat down.
‘Is that how you amuse yourself here?’ he asked.
‘One way,’ she replied, rather curtly. She had perceived, very shortly after her arrival, that Otho was vexed with her presence, and had resolved in consequence to take her own course. He had been disappointed to find that she never uttered a word as to the dulness of Bradstane or its want of society, nor ever mentioned any idea of deserting it. Women with ‘resources within themselves’ were, of course, an unknown species to Otho—he would vaguely have called them ‘blues,’ if asked for his views on the subject. His sister must be a blue; and after a moment given to reflection on the situation, he burst into a short, rough laugh.
‘Ha, ha! No wonder that you and Magdalen don’t get on. And if that’s the sort of thing you have a fancy for, you never will. She’s clever, deucedly clever, is Magdalen, but it isn’t in the dead languages that she excels.’ And he laughed again, as if some inner thought greatly diverted him.
‘If she troubles herself as little as I do whether we get on or not, she will be very indifferent about it,’ said Eleanor, annoyed in a truly girlish fashion at thus having ‘Magdalen’ always thrust at her.
‘Jealous!’ said Otho, with his great guffaw, rubbing his hands together.
Eleanor felt her face in a flame.