He certainly paled a little. And Hastings said to himself that Ned had, in some subtle way, changed indefinably, but certainly. His eyes did not carry out the comfortable familiarity of his attire. It appeared to Hastings that they were making some demand upon him—a demand that he could not understand.
But the next second young Carrington came forward with at least a surface cordiality.
“How did you find me out—Hastings?” he said, with a slight hesitation before the name, as perplexing as the characteristic grasp of his hand, familiar and unfamiliar at once, and the tinge of formality that obtruded itself unmistakably.
“I had no idea you were here until I heard it just now from Richards,” said Hastings, struggling with a vague sense of rebuff.
The name might have been the Medusa head.
Then “Richards?” John Carrington queried. Hastings flushed.
“My uncle, Mr. Wade, has given me the Tray-Spot mine,” he said, and his voice became formal in turn. “We lunched with our manager to-day.”
In spite of his annoyance, his lips twitched at the memory of it.
“It seems that there is war between the two mines, Mr. Carrington;” he turned to the older man. “I don’t know anything of mining, but there must be some way out of it which would be just both to your interests and to ours.”
For John Carrington had impressed him indelibly as an honest man.