The man had succeeded in startling both women, as a matter of fact. Eleanor, looking suddenly up from her plate on hearing Mrs. Clover’s cry of surprise, saw him lounging carelessly in the hall doorway, where he had appeared as noiselessly as a shadow. His sly, satiric smile was twisting his thin lips, and a sardonic humour glittered in the pale eyes that shifted from Eleanor’s face to Mrs. Clover’s, and back again.
“I wish,” he said, nodding to the caretaker, “you’d slip down to the dock and tell Eph to have the boat ready by seven o’clock.”
“Yes, sir,” assented Mrs. Clover hastily. She crossed at once toward the outer door. From her tone and the alacrity with which she moved to do his bidding, no less than from the half-cringing look with which she met his regard, Eleanor had no difficulty in divining her abject fear of this man whom she could, apparently, have taken in her big hands and broken in two without being annoyed by his struggles.
“And, here!” he called after her—“supper ready?”
“Yes, sir—quite.”
“Very well; I’ll have mine. Eph can come up as soon as he’s finished overhauling the motor. Wait a minute; tell him to be sure to bring the oars up with him.”
“Yes, sir, I will, sir.”
Mrs. Clover dodged through the door and, running down the pair of steps from the kitchen stoop to the ground, vanished behind the house.
“Enjoying your breakfast, I trust?”
Eleanor pushed back her chair and rose. She feared him, feared him as she might have feared any loathly, venomous thing; but she was not in the least spiritually afraid of him. Contempt and disgust only emphasised the quality of her courage. She confronted him without a tremor.