Elinor bit her ruby lip and looked daggers as he lounged in his seat, pretending to be absorbed in a newspaper, but with lips compressed beneath his dark mustache, and a strange, somber light in the large, black eyes that puzzled Elinor, who had not the key to his mood.
Indeed she began to be conscious of a vague feeling of dread and anxiety.
She asked herself over and over why he had chosen to bear her company on her homeward way.
Evidently it was through no tenderness for her. Though scrupulously polite and attentive, he preserved the appearance of distant friendliness in too marked a fashion to be misinterpreted.
When at last, after traveling without delay or rest, they found themselves seated in the carriage that was to convey them to Glenalvan Hall, Elinor felt a certain sense of relief mingled with her chagrin and disappointment. She loved Bertram Chesleigh, but his moodiness and silence were strangely oppressive.
"Why did he come with me?" she asked herself for the last time as the carriage rolled along the breezy, wooded drive, and her strange companion lay back among the cushions, his hat tilted over his eyes, his face pale, his lips working convulsively. "What will Clare say when she sees how disdainfully he treats me? How she will triumph at my disappointment."
Her heart sank at the prospect of returning to the quietude and dreariness of Glenalvan Hall after the gay, easy, luxurious life she had led for the last few months.
For a moment her love for the indifferent man beside her was transformed to hate.
Why had he slighted her beauty, and her fascinations to turn to that doll-faced child whose life was a disgrace to the Glenalvans?
She hated Bertram Chesleigh because he had not rescued her from the poverty of which she had grown so weary, and from which his love might have delivered her.