Dinner in the gracious Elizabethan dining-room was an oppressive and discomfortable meal to all concerned. Mrs. Romer was full of tremors and apprehensions over the idea of a possible thunder-storm.
The quarry-owner was silent and preoccupied, his mind reviewing all the complicated issues of a new financial scheme. Dangelis kept looking at his watch. He had promised to be at Dead Man’s Lane by nine o’clock, and the meal seemed to drag itself out longer than he had anticipated.
He was a little apprehensive, too, as to what reception he would receive when he did arrive at Mr. Quincunx’s threshold.
Their last encounter had been so extremely controversial, that he feared lest the sensitive recluse might be harbouring one of his obstinate psychic reactions at his expense.
He was very unwilling to risk the loss of Mr. Quincunx’s society. There was no one in Nevilton to whom he could discourse quite as freely and philosophically as he could to the conscripted office-clerk, and his American interest in a “representative type” found inexhaustible satisfaction in listening to the cynical murmurings of this eccentric being.
Lacrima was calm and self-contained, but she ate hardly anything; and the hand with which she raised her glass to her lips trembled in spite of all her efforts.
Gladys herself was exuberant with suppressed excitement. Every now and then she glanced furtively at the window, and at other times, when there was no reason for such an outburst, she gave vent to a low feline laugh. She was of the type of animal that the approach of thunder, and the presence of electricity in the air, fills with magnetic nervous exaltation.
The meal was over at last, and the various persons of the group hastened to separate, each of them weighed upon, as if by an atmospheric hand, with the burden of their own purposes and apprehensions.
The two girls retired to their rooms. Mrs. Romer retreated to her favourite corner in the entrance hall, and then, uneasy even here, took refuge in the assuaging society of her friend the housekeeper.