“And he didn't call me back!” he thought bitterly. “He let me go and never said a word!” Then his mood changed. “I've accepted too many favours from him, if he has begun to keep count of them.” But he could not understand how Benson could have so quickly ended a friendship which he had come to regard as one of the immutable relations of his life.
It was almost midnight when he reached home. There was a faint light burning in the hall, and the library door stood open. His aunt had waited up for him.
“Is that you, Stephen?” she called softly, as he closed and locked the front door.
“Yes,” he answered her, and then as he entered the library, “I'm sorry you waited up for me. If I'd thought you were going to, I'd have gotten home sooner.”
“Surely you didn't walk home, Stephen!” she said. She saw that his shoes were muddy.
“But I did though. I went to see Mr. Benson, and when I left him, every one was gone from out this way, so I had to walk.”
He slipped into a chair at her side.
“Are you very tired, dear?” she asked.
“No, it was nothing, why did you wait up for me? You know I might have stayed at Mr. Benson's all night.”
A shadow crossed his face. The lawyer's words came back to him. He felt that he had been cast off, that that relation had suddenly ceased to be; and he was both hurt and puzzled by the readiness with which Benson had seemingly dismissed him from his regard and liking. He was most undemonstrative himself, but until that night he had as firmly believed in Benson's affection for him as he had believed in any other tangible fact of his existence; more than this, he cherished a great liking for the lawyer; he had been proud to consider him his friend. He did not know that Benson's concern for him, and interest in him, was but one of the many manifestations of his love for Virginia Landray.