‘There to wither and die, I suppose? Poor things! I have a great weakness for flowers—those flowers, especially. If you dislike them, will you do me the cruel favour to return them? I mean it, really.’
‘But I do not dislike them. I—it—I thought I would carry them in my hand to-night,’ she said, distracted at the extent of the concessions he was wringing from her, but perfectly aware that when he promised to see that Otho behaved himself, and then began instantly to talk about violets, he conveyed a hint which she must accept on pain of his displeasure.
‘You did! I could not possibly wish for more than that,’ he said, and there was triumph, intense, if repressed, in his smile and his tone.
Eleanor could only feel wretched, and wish she were a hundred miles away from Bradstane; all the more fervently when, on looking up, she found that Magdalen had laid the newspaper down, and was looking at her with a mocking smile—the smile of one who, being in difficulties herself, was not sorry to see some one else entangled.
Here the door opened. Otho came in, with Barlow behind him, to announce dinner. The master of the house offered his arm to Miss Wynter, who took it, treating him with what seemed a composed cheerfulness. During the meal, Otho was portentously gentle and polite to every one he addressed. There was no trace in voice or manner of his late anger; only in the sullen glow which still lurked in his eyes. Eleanor, who had acquired the sad habitude of noticing such things, observed that he scarcely touched wine. In his whole demeanour there was a most unusual softness and courtesy. She could not shake off her constraint; the shock of the unbridled fury which she had seen on his face when she had gone into the drawing-room was not to be easily obliterated. Never before had she felt so strongly his likeness, with all his goodly outward apparel of strength and a kind of beauty, to some savage, wild creature—some beast of prey, whose spirit sat in his heart, and looked out of the windows of his eyes. With all the dread and foreboding that he had begun to inspire in her, she always thought of him as ‘poor Otho.’
CHAPTER XXIV
OTHO’S REVENGE
When Michael Langstroth went into the concert-room that night, rather late, he found the place crowded with an audience, watchful and attentive as only country audiences can be, all in their war-paint and feathers, as Roger remarked, and the choir, in a row on the platform, lustily singing of how
‘The oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree,
They grow the best at home, in the north countrie.’
Going up the room, he found himself near the top of it without having found a seat, and he stood looking about him, when a demonstration a little to one side caused him to turn, and he saw a small, lean hand beckoning to him, and a thin, eager-looking face, brimming over with pleasure, asking him, as loudly as silent expressiveness can ask, to come and sit beside her, and, what was more to the purpose, pointing out a space close to her for his accommodation. It was his little patient, Effie Johnson, radiant in the proud consciousness of a new frock, and an unheard-of treat—that of being the only one of her brethren and sisters privileged to be present at the concert. He nodded and smiled, and gradually made his way to her, receiving many a greeting on his way from ‘all sorts and conditions’ of men and women. Effie was on a side-bench, he found, and his place was beside her; but it was a side-bench at the end nearest the platform. Her mother sat at one side of her, and greeted Michael with a nod, and an unusually serene smile. When he was seated, Michael found that amongst his near neighbours were Eleanor Askam, who had found a seat beside Mrs. Parker, after all; and beside Miss Askam, his brother Gilbert. He did not see either Otho or Miss Wynter, and was a little puzzled; for Dr. Rowntree had told him of Eleanor’s note to his sister, explaining why she could not go with her.