“Yes?”
“I think so. But he will need great care. He will not be able to leave his bed for a day or two. We found your brooch pinned inside his clothes.”
“Yes?”
He turned sharply and for the first time looked directly at her.
“Of course, we knew why you put it there. It was good of you. But why—don’t you ask after him, Henrietta?” in a different tone.
She felt the colour rise to her cheeks—and she wished it anywhere else.
“I saw him this morning,” she murmured.
“Oh!” he replied in surprise. And he turned to the mirror again. “I see.”
She began to wish that he would leave her, for his silence made her horribly nervous. And she dared not start a subject herself, because she could not trust her voice. The hands of the white-faced clock jerked slowly on, marking the seconds, and accentuating the silence. She grew so nervous at last that she could not lift her eyes from her plate, and she ate though she was scarcely able to swallow, because she dared not leave off.
It did not occur to her that Anthony Clyne was as ill at ease as she was; and oppressed, moreover, to a much greater degree by the memory of certain scenes which had taken place in that room. Her nervousness was in part the reflection of his constraint. And his constraint arose from two feelings widely different.