‘Only young Restormel,’ he said. ‘You will like him, Gundred. I am sure you will like him immensely. He is one of the most attractive people I have ever met. After all, he is an old neighbour of yours, not like the Hoope-Arkwrights and the rest of their friends. I made him promise to come over to-morrow. And then, later on, he might come to stay with us for a bit. I should like you to see more of him, Gundred. He will be someone for you to help and befriend.’
A very long silence, leaden and ominous, filled the brougham. Then Gundred spoke, in a bland, deliberate low voice.
‘Really, Kingston,’ she said, ‘you are almost trying at times.’
Her husband felt himself annihilated. This, from Gundred, was very heavy rebuke. He made no answer, and they drove on to Brakelond without another word.
Gundred, however, was too good a wife to make useless difficulties. As her husband had invited this young man, this young man must clearly be endured. After all, the visit would soon be over, and she herself need not put in more than a bare appearance. To tell the truth, she was not quite easy as to her own attitude in the matter. It could not be altogether right to conceive such violent antipathies, and she was painfully surprised to find herself entertaining such a feeling. She told herself that there could be no smoke without fire, and that sooner or later her infallible female instinct would be found justified. But until it should be so found justified, she was far too conscientiously good a woman to be happy in the indulgence of an unreasonable hatred. Accordingly, she deliberately suppressed her annoyance, and made it her penance to receive Ivor Restormel on the morrow with her usual quiet grace. The effort brought its own reward; dislike him mysteriously, instinctively, she still did and always would, but there was no longer the uncomfortable vehemence about the feeling. She could tolerate him, though she could not make him welcome.
Ivor Restormel walked over in the afternoon. Gundred gave him tea and then left him to her husband’s care, on the plea of a post to catch. Kingston took his guest into the new wing that had been built on the promontory after the fire, and proceeded to question him and talk to him more exhaustively than had been possible the night before amid the exigencies of a party, no matter how scandalously disregarded. There was no beginning about their friendship, it seemed to Kingston, no breaking of new ground. It was simply the picking up of a dropped thread where it had fallen. The feeling was strange and almost uncanny, the more so that it was evidently not shared by Ivor Restormel. He received his host’s overtures with diffidence, seemed ill at ease, at a loss to understand the warmth of his treatment. Mr. Darnley was nothing more to him than a chance acquaintance of the night before. As the dialogue went forward, too, the visitor’s uneasiness became more and more marked. His face took on a strange look of strain and anxiety; in his speech could be heard from time to time that note of abstraction which can be heard in a voice whose owner is trying hard to keep up a conversation, while his mind is fixed far away on the contemplation of unpleasant private matters. Kingston watched the expression of his guest’s eyes, the curious hunted fear that his whole manner began to suggest, and again experienced more strongly than ever the mysterious feeling of having seen that manner, that strained expression, somewhere before. His memory must be playing him the maddest tricks; for he could have sworn that this boy was well known to him in every detail of face and disposition; yet by now it was clearly proved--as clearly proved, at least, as anything in this world could ever be--that the two had never met, and never even set eyes on each other before. But Kingston still hoped against hope that a chance discovery in the dialogue might reveal some hint or glimpse of a former meeting, however brief, partial, trifling. Thus, and thus alone, could his instinct be justified.