"Six and a half. How did you guess my size?"
"By your hand. I had seen it, and felt it."
As if jealous of the interview—it seemed so to me at the moment—Hill came in to break it. Lady Chandos wanted him in the west wing.
He went up at once. I sat thinking of all that had occurred. Would Mr. Edwin Barley indeed claim me? Could he? Would the law allow him? A shiver took me at the thought.
The tea waited on the table when he came down again. It seems very monotonous, I feel sure, to be alluding so continually to the meals, but you see they were the chief times when I was alone with Mr. Chandos; so I can only crave pardon.
Mr. Chandos's countenance wore a sad and gloomy look: but that was nothing unusual after his visits to the west wing. I wondered very much that he did not have the shutters closed after what took place the previous night; but there they were open, and nothing between the room and the window but the thin lace curtains. The oak-brown silk curtains, with their golden flowers, were at the extreme corners of the windows, not made to draw. Long afterwards I found that he had the shutters left open because I was there. As the habit had been to leave them open previously, he did not choose to alter it now: people inclined to be censorious, might have remarked upon it. That aspect of the affair never occurred to me.
"What led to the scene with that man to-day?" he abruptly asked, after drinking his cup of tea in silence. "How came you to meet him?"
I briefly explained. Mentioning also that I had seen Mrs. Penn with him, and what she said to me of his inquiries. And I told him of Mr. Edwin Barley's questions to me about the visit of the police-officers.
"If Mrs. Penn is to make an acquaintance of Mr. Edwin Barley, she cannot remain at Chandos," he coldly remarked. "Have you finished tea? Then it shall go away."
He rose to ring the bell, did not resume his seat again, but stood with his back to the fire, and watched the servants take the things away. I got my work about as usual.