Sara's eyes rested thoughtfully on Trent's face a moment.
It was odd how kindly and considerate he always showed himself towards Miles Herrick. Perhaps somewhere within him a responsive chord was touched by the evidence of the other man's broken life.
“Miss Tennant is thinking that it's a case of the blind leading the blind for me to act as a cicerone into society,” remarked Trent curtly.
Sara winced at the repellent hardness of his tone, but she declined to take up the challenge.
“I am very glad you persuaded Miles to come over,” was all she said.
Trent's lips closed in a straight line. It seemed as though he were trying to resist the appeal of her gently given answer; and Miles, conscious of the antagonism in the atmosphere, interposed with some commonplace question concerning her visit to London.
“You're looking thinner than you were, Sara,” he added critically.
She flushed a little as she felt Trent's hawk-like glance sweep over her.
“Oh, I've been leading too gay a life,” she said hastily. “The Durwards seem to know half London, so that we crowded about a dozen engagements into each day—and a few more into the night.”
“Durward?” The word sprang violently from Trent's lips, almost as though jerked out of him, and Sara, glancing towards him in some astonishment, surprised a strange, suddenly vigilant expression in his face. It was immediately succeeded by a blank look of indifference, yet beneath the assumption of indifference his eyes seemed to burn with a kind of slumbering hostility.