"No good will come out of this! Why should she have come back? She is full of deceit. It's just as Eden says—she made his illness an excuse to be near you! I'm glad he's not grateful to her! I'm not grateful to her. I despise her, and hate her."
His carved profile showed no sign of emotion. He let his arm remain in his sister's clasp and his eyes rested composedly on the bright head of Minny Ware, but Meg was aware of an inexplicable magnetic current from him which, if she had been more sensitive, she might have interpreted as a volcanic disturbance in the restrained tenacity of his passion.
Eden appeared in the hall, slid past them, and went to where Minny crouched above the purple mass of petunias. She was not aware which of the brothers had approached, and scarcely knew whether to be pleased or disappointed when it was Eden's voice that said: "I'm afraid you feel very tired. Heroic exertion, that—saving the lives of two able-bodied men."
She tilted her head so that he looked down into her eyes, and saw the sunlight on the satin prominence of her cheek-bones. She denied heroism emphatically. "I only helped you a bit with Finch. He would struggle. But—I am tired—I don't sleep well—I'm restless."
He said: "If you should be taking another early stroll to-morrow, we might meet again by the lake. We could talk."
"I'd like that. . . . Mrs. Vaughan's a darling, but—I'm getting bored. Oh, I'm a beast! I'm always like that."
He laughed. "So am I. We'll meet and compare our beastliness. It's going to be fine to-morrow."
In the car the brothers rode in silence, broken at last by Eden's saying rather fretfully: "Sorry, old chap."
The Whiteoak car was an inauspicious place for an apology to a driver whose ears were not only assailed by its rattle, but who was trying to fathom the meaning of a new jerking movement in its anatomy.
"What'd you say?" he demanded, turning his head
