It had seemed to Alan, when Mrs. Sherrill had spoken to him a few minutes before, that her manner toward him had been more reserved and constrained than earlier in the evening; and he had put that down to the lateness of the hour; but now he realized that she probably had been discussing him with Constance, and that it was somewhat in defiance of her mother that Constance had come down to speak with him again.
"Are you taking any one over to the other house with you?" she inquired.
"Any one?"
"A servant, I mean."
"No."
"Then you'll let us lend you a man from here."
"You're awfully good; but I don't think I'll need any one to-night. Mr. Corvet's—my father's man—is coming back to-morrow, I understand. I'll get along very well until then."
She was silent a moment as she looked away. Her shoulders suddenly jerked a little. "I wish you'd take some one with you," she persisted. "I don't like to think of you alone over there."
"My father must have been often alone there."
"Yes," she said. "Yes." She looked at him quickly, then away, checking a question. She wanted to ask, he knew, what he had discovered in that lonely house which had so agitated him; for of course she had noticed agitation in him. And he had intended to tell her or, rather, her father. He had been rehearsing to himself the description of the man he had met there in order to ask Sherrill about him; but now Alan knew that he was not going to refer the matter even to Sherrill just yet.