He fell back from the step, and covered his eyes.
Sir Gambier sprang into the driver's seat. Tony did not speak again. Her father took the steering-wheel, and the car throbbed away into the dusk. She made no protest, and only once looked back—at the man who still stood in the middle of the lane, with his hands over his eyes.
CHAPTER XI DISILLUSION AT SIXTEEN
Rather to Tony's surprise, she and her father drove in silence. As a matter of fact, Sir Gambier was baffled by his younger daughter. Awdrey he could have dealt with easily enough—he was used to Awdrey's scrapes. But Tony had always been more or less impersonal—a vague some one for whom one paid school-bills, who came home for the holidays, made herself pretty scarce, and then went back to school again, to write prim letters home every Sunday. It was a new idea that this half-realised being should suddenly show herself possessed of a personality in the form of a scrape—and such a scrape too! Furlonger! He grunted with fury, but—as would never have been the case if he had had Awdrey to deal with—he said nothing.
Once, however, he looked sideways, and noticed how Tony was sitting. Her back was bent, and her arms rested on her knees, the hands clenched between them; her chin was a little thrust forward into the darkness through which they rushed.
At last they reached Shovelstrode. The moon was high above the pines, and they seemed to be waving in waters of silver. The house-front shimmered in the white light, as the motor pulsed up to it. Tony climbed down, and stood stiffly on the step.
"You'd better go to your room," said Sir Gambier in muddled rage. "I—I expect your mother will want to speak to you."